Images of the Prophet Muhammad

An issue that arises with some regularity in the study of Islamic art surrounds images of the Prophet Muhammad (who died in 632 C.E.) and whether it is permissible to make or view them. The historical record on this topic suggests one set of beliefs, but individual convictions, the teachings of different schools of Islamic theology, and current-day political rhetoric all suggest other points of view. This multiplicity of perspectives reflects the variety in the praxis of this (or indeed any) religion, and reinforces the fact that there is no one judgment on this matter that would encompass the beliefs of all Muslims in all parts of the world, or would apply to all moments in the past or present.

There are ways, however, to understand why this topic has been such a flashpoint. In part this is because it is embedded in the question of whether or not figural imagery is forbidden by the religion of Islam. The answer is unequivocal in certain realms. There are no representations of God, for instance, because God is understood as absolute, eternal, and omnipresent, having no bodily manifestation. Therefore, rather than using what would be inappropriate means to convey God’s qualities, in terms of the human form, artists in the Muslim tradition have created other devices to represent him, inspired by descriptions in the Qur’an or sayings of the Prophet (hadith). Clouds or lamps are among the common visual metaphors to represent him; calligraphy proclaiming the ninety-nine names that describe his attributes is another.

In addition, any images or icons that might be worshipped as idols are forbidden, and therefore no figures are ever depicted in mosques or in copies of the Qur’an. Yet there is variety in beliefs about whether images of religious figures such as prophets can appear in other contexts, and there are many instances in which they do. This includes biographical, historical, or literary texts in which paintings of figures such as Ibrahim/Abraham or Musa/Moses illustrate stories of their lives; here they provide instruction and were not intended for worship. Two examples showing the Prophet Muhammad in this context have gained some fame because they were shown and discussed as part of a class lecture that raised controversy in late 2022–early 2023. [1]

Both come from manuscripts, and so viewing them would have been a personal experience, as these manuscripts were meant to be held and read by an individual. They were painted onto pages to accompany a text, and as such were surrounded by writing. In addition, the pages before and after would have also included related illustrations.

The angel Gabriel appears to Muhammad

The first was included in a world history called the Compendium of Chronicles (Jami al-Tawarikh), written in the early 14th century and copied several times. The copy from which this painting comes is dated to c. 1306–14, and was made in present-day Iran. The painting falls within a section of the chronicle on the life of the Prophet Muhammad, one of several prophets and religious figures discussed in the text. There are other paintings that show Muhammad in the manuscript, illustrating a number of moments in his life.

The event depicted in this painting of Muhammad, which can be viewed here, is the first visitation the Prophet received from the angel Jibra’il/Gabriel. Muhammad often spent time in prayer in the hills outside the city of Mecca, where he lived, and was sitting in a cave there when Gabriel (on the left) appeared to him and started to deliver the revelations from God that form the contents of the Qur’an. A rocky landscape indicating the hills of Mecca is indicated below, but otherwise the focus is on the two figures.

The second painting is part of a manuscript produced in present-day Turkey in 1595–96. Titled the Biography of the Prophet’ (Siyer-i Nebi), the lengthy, Turkish-language text is illustrated with more than 800 paintings of Muhammad. This particular one, viewable here, shows the Prophet at a similar moment in time to the previous painting, at the hill where he started receiving revelations. Here, however, Gabriel is not shown and the hill, known as Jabal al-Nur (The Mountain of Light), is given more prominence. It appears as a golden mountain rising from a golden plain, with a host of angels watching from above.

Another significant difference between the two paintings is that the face of the Prophet is shown in the first, but is veiled in the second, which also shows his body as framed by flames. While the earliest surviving paintings portraying Muhammad in manuscripts from the 13th and 14th centuries include neither veil nor flames, these features became increasingly common in the early 16th century. It has been suggested that the veil shields a direct view of Muhammad’s face, so that a truly spiritual perception of him, undistracted by a visual form, might occur, while the flames are the materialization of God’s light, said to emanate from Muhammad. The symbol of the flames also helped to convey Muhammad’s special status as the last of the Prophets to be sent by God to spread his divine message. [2]

From a Persian poem called “The Orchard’”

Paintings of Muhammad have also been included in poems that describe events from his life. One of the most often illustrated of these events, known as the mi‘raj, is the night he traveled to Jerusalem, then ascended to heaven where he met with God and the earlier prophets. A beautifully executed example showing Muhammad rising to the heavens, which you can see here, comes from an illustrated copy of a Persian poem called “The Orchard” (Bustan) by the 13th-century author Sa‘di. It shows the Prophet as he is carried into the sky by the Buraq, a mythical beast with the body of a horse and the head of a human. Muhammad’s left hand is in a gesture indicating speaking, reflecting the fact that he conversed with the Buraq during the flight. Below is the sacred sanctuary at Mecca (the haram al-sharif). Here, the face of the Prophet is shown, but his head is surrounded by a halo of flames. Similarly, the manuscript of the Qur’an in the mosque below is also shrouded in flames, expressing the exalted nature of both Prophet and holy book.

The question of religious images

The existence of these works of art, among many hundreds of depictions of the prophets of Islam, may give rise to the question as to why there have been such vociferous, and sometimes violent, reactions to teaching or publishing them. In some cases, the response has been to images that were disrespectful, demeaning, and racist, as in the cartoons published in Denmark and France in the early 2000s. [3] In other cases, however, the response has been to the types of images presented above, made by Muslims, included in the kinds of texts where such imagery was commonplace, and wholly reverential in the minds of the people who created them.

This reflects the fact that not all Muslims hold the same views on the issue of representing religious figures, and most especially the Prophet Muhammad. While some Muslims have considered depiction of him acceptable in specific contexts, there are others who would disagree and who believe that any depiction of the Prophet is offensive, even when made by Muslims and out of respect. Even if such images exist, they consider them sacrilegious and do not want to view them; some believe that no one should view them. This is the case in many Muslim cultures past and present. Accommodating this point of view is difficult given the concept of academic freedom that universities in many parts of the world espouse, but it is important to recognize that this conundrum is not particular to Muslims, Islam, or Islamic art.

We might consider the broader question of showing any religious art in art history courses. The primary content of most includes paintings, sculptures, manuscripts, and other materials originally produced for purposes of worship. In calling these works “art,” much is lost about the reasons or modes of their production and their potential to speak to audiences of believers. It also overlooks the sensitivities in many religious traditions to showing images of icons that in their original contexts might only be viewed during certain ceremonies, at certain times of year, and by certain believers. We could equally consider the impact when the objects themselves are shown in museums for any member of the public to behold. These are issues that pertain to traditions from around the globe, from the Americas, Africa, and the Pacific as well as Europe and Asia, and are not just confined to the art of Muslims.

It is also important to note that responses to these kinds of paintings have also been heightened by the current political climate. On the one hand, the promotion of certain interpretations of Islam has set up conflicts among Muslim communities with differing practices. The last two centuries, for instance, have seen the spread of the teachings of an 18th-century legal scholar from Saudi Arabia, Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab. ‘Abd al-Wahhab promoted a movement of purification and reform in the practice of Islam and averred even the suggestion of veneration of any figure other than God. This form of Islam has gained prominence as the wealth and political influence of Saudi Arabia has grown, and ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s adherents are able to promote their perspective among Muslims in other parts of the world. Other communities have also long espoused orthodoxy, quite separate from the Saudi doctrine. As the differences between these and other Muslim communities play out on a public stage, there has been a rise in denouncements of practices that have been acceptable in various Muslim societies—including the making of figural art.

The actions of groups that use the destruction of art for political purposes further muddy the water. The images of the dynamiting of the Buddha statues at Bamiyan and the devastation of the monuments of Palmyra have been the most widely publicized. However, as many have commented, these acts were not inspired only by religious sentiment but were shrewdly orchestrated to generate outrage among foreign media and cultural institutions—they do not reflect the beliefs of all Muslims today, let alone the views of Muslims everywhere in the past. [4]

The role of history

In understanding all of these contextual layers, the role of art history must also be examined. Past scholars are responsible for creating and reinforcing the stereotype that Islamic art forbids figural imagery and the subsequent characterization of Muslim civilizations that this perception has enabled. Despite thousands of examples of representational art, the earliest 20th-century publications in Islamic art history promoted the notion that figures were problematic in this body of art, and the perception has persisted despite decades of subsequent revision on the topic. Having been thus reinforced, politicians in North America and Europe have recently seized upon this issue of figuration, holding it as a sign of cultural advancement and liberal society. They use an alleged inimical attitude toward images to justify discriminatory policies against “backward” Muslim-majority countries. This in fact is a centuries-old tactic, one that also has resonance with 19th-century characterizations of Jewish cultures as also being regressive. This way of thinking privileges the depiction of the human figure as the height of artistic expression (itself a way a reifying certain Eurocentric values), discounts the varied reasons for eschewing figuration in certain contexts, and indeed overlooks the Christian history of doing so.

These are some of the reasons why teaching certain images in Islamic art have become a tricky proposition, but the lessons to be learned from recent episodes should not be that Islamic art is simply too dangerous a topic to address in the classroom. For those not as familiar with the subject, it may seem too easy to wander into areas that could lead to censure or other consequences. But it is important not to conflate the paintings shown in the class with the highly offensive and intentionally provocative cartoons and other imagery that have sparked violent responses in the recent past, nor to assume that all Muslims will respond the same way to viewing images of the Prophet. This aspect of the historical record should and must not be lost in the present heavily politicized environment—but they must be taught with a sensitivity that we can continue to develop.

The Qur’an is the holy book of the religion of Islam, containing the words of God as revealed to the Prophet Muhammad starting in the year 610. Following the Prophet’s death in 632, these revelations, which had initially been memorized by the early Muslim converts, were fully written out for the first time. At this time they were organized into 114 chapters (called suras in Arabic) that were themselves divided into verses (ayas), and placed in order of decreasing length rather than the order in which they were revealed (except for the first very short opening chapter). Following this codification of the text, Qur’ans have been copied in beautifully produced and lavish manuscripts that reflect the fact that they contain the words of God. The text is written in specially devised scripts, and gold and colored inks are used to enhance the appearance of the pages.

When you encounter pages from a Qur’an, you find much more than just the Arabic text. There are different traditions about where certain verses end, how certain words are pronounced, the intonation to use when reading them aloud, and other such details. As a result, many of the visual features in the text that are classified as decoration were actually introduced into the manuscripts to preserve these specific readings. This essay will help you understand the many marks that appear in historic manuscripts, and how they facilitate the ways the Qur’an is studied, recited, and prayed with.

Frontispieces

Moving from the front to the back of a manuscript, for instance, you might first encounter a frontispiece. This is either a single page, or two-facing pages, with painted ornament which serves as a decorative entry into the contents.

Frontispiece to volume two of a 30-volume Qur’an, late 9th–early 10th century (Syria or Iraq), ink, opaque watercolor and gold on parchment, 17.1 cm (each page) (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

Many early Qur’ans have frontispieces with geometric or floral illumination, such as this example from the 9th or 10th century which has interlacing gold borders enclosing a geometric, stippled design. Extending into the margins on either side are floral roundels, also in gold.

Other frontispieces might also include information about the text itself. The Qur’an copied by Ibn al-Bawwab in Baghdad in 1000–1001 is an important manuscript that serves as an example of what this information might be. It includes three double-page frontispieces, two of which have calligraphy along with the gold, blue, black, and brown decorative motifs.

Left: first frontispiece with script in oblong bands; right: second frontispiece with script in interlacing octagons, Qur’an of Ibn al-Bawwab with chapter, verse, word, letter, vocalization, and diacritic counts, 1000–1001 (Iraq, Baghdad), ink and gold pigment on paper, 18.3 x 14.5 cm (Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, Is 1431, folios 6 verso and 7 verso)

In the first frontispiece, the script is arranged in oblong bands while in the second it is set within interlacing octagons. The calligraphy specifies the number of chapters, verses, words, letters, and diacritical marks in this volume of the Qur’an. This accords to an accounting approved by ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib (an early convert and a son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad). Ibn al-Bawwab would have included this information to certify that he had copied exactly a particular reading of the Qur’an, in its entirety, and without error. This last part was important because it’s always possible, when copying a text by hand, for words or phrases to be accidentally skipped or repeated.

Chapter headings

The text following the frontispiece is organized by chapter, with the chapter names written in a different script from the main text. On this page, the title of chapter 54, sura al-qamar (“the moon”), appears on the fifth line from the top, in a gold ink also different from that used for the Qur’anic text.

Folio from the Qur’an of Ibn al-Bawwab with Sura 53 (al-Najm, “The Star”), verse 53 and Sura 54 (al-Qamar, “The Moon”), verses 1–11, 1000–1001 (Iraq, Baghdad), ink and gold pigment on paper, 18.3 x 14.5 cm
(Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, Is 1431, folio 243 verso)

Since the chapters names were applied later to each revelation (usually taking a word that features prominently within it), the change in script makes it clear that the titles are not part of God’s words. This heading also includes the number of verses in the sura (in this case, 55), and the place where it was revealed to Muhammad—either Mecca or Medina (this verse was revealed in Mecca, as indicated by the word “Meccan” in the margin).

Folio from the Qur’an of Ibn al-Bawwab with Sura 53 (al-Najm, “The Star”), verse 53 and Sura 54 (al-Qamar, “The Moon”), verses 1–11, 1000–1001 (Iraq, Baghdad), ink and gold pigment on paper 18.3 x 14.5 cm (Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, Is 1431, folio 243 verso)

Diacritics and vocalizations

In Arabic, short vowels do not have their own characters, and some consonants share character forms only distinguished with the addition of diacritics (the dots placed above or below these forms to create different letters). This copy of the Qur’an is distinguished by the clear and consistent use of diacritic and vocalization marks, which did not always appear in earlier Qur’ans. This is an important feature since the Qur’an, whose name itself means “recite,” is taught and memorized by reading aloud, following rules about the pronunciation, style, tone and intonation by which it is voiced. The Qur’an is also recited as part of daily prayers, during sermons and other ceremonies, and is experienced by sound as much as by sight. The inclusion of these marks therefore not only help avoid confusion about which letter has been written, but also assist someone reciting the Qur’an aloud to pronounce the words correctly according to the reading by which the text has been copied.

Verse markers

This page also includes markings for the ends of verses. These kinds of markings appear in many Qur’an manuscripts and can take different forms, ranging from small gold circles to rosettes or the motifs here, of the three dots arranged in a triangle (one such marking can be seen at the left side of the second line).

At the end of every fifth verse the dots are replaced with a golden letter kha, as seen on the top line.

Tenth verses are marked in a more elaborate way: within the text is a gold circle inscribed with a letter that represents the number of verses reached, while another gold roundel in the margin includes that number written out in words. This kind of mark was included because variant readings can break verses in different locations; the insertion of the verse marker would therefore make it clear which reading is used in a given manuscript. It also helps the reader keep a count of the verses, both to certify the integrity of the text that has been copied, and also to track how many verses have been read on a particular day, since sometimes worshippers will read the text in equal parts over the course of a week or a month.

Markers for prostration

One last type of mark found on this page indicates where a person reading or reciting the Qur’an should prostrate (bend down and touch the forehead to the ground). Here it is an illuminated circle to the right of the chapter heading; at its center is a golden star-shape around the word sajda (prostrate). There are either fourteen or fifteen verses for which prostration is indicated (depending on different beliefs), and the act reflects the person’s humility through his or her willingness to prostrate in front of God.

Ending illumination from the Qur’an of Ibn al-Bawwab with letter counts, 1000–1001 (Iraq, Baghdad), ink and gold pigment on paper, 18.3 x 14.5 cm (Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, Is 1431, folios 285 verso–286 recto)

Finispieces

Finally, at the end of the text, in what is called a finispiece, some Qur’ans include tables that provide the number of times each letter in the alphabet appears. These tables serve again to certify the completeness and correctness of the text that has been copied. The Ibn al-Bawwab Qur’an includes just such an accounting on a set of illuminated folios that concludes the manuscript; on the right side of each table is the name of the letter, and to left is written the number of its occurrences.

Division into volumes

One last development to note are the methods for separating the Qur’anic text into sections in order to facilitate its reading over specific periods of time. In these cases, the text would be divided in nearly equal parts that might be read during the course of a week (creating seven parts called manazil, plural of manzil) or a month (creating 30 parts called ajza’, plural of juz’). The thirtieths might also be sub-divided into a half (nisf), a fourth (rub‘), and even sixtieths (ahzab, plural of hizb). In a single-volume Qur’an, these divisions in the text could be indicated with illuminations in the margins. Alternatively, the sections could be bound separately; in especially elaborate productions, each of these volumes might be given their own frontis- and finispieces.

These interventions into the Arabic text were devised over many centuries in response to the changing needs of the numerous Muslim communities. As the text of the Qur’an was written, as the initially small group of Muslims spread into non-Arabic speaking areas, as scholars developed variant readings, and as rituals involving the Qur’an developed, calligraphers and illuminators responded with a range of visual devices to help and support with readings of the text, but in beautiful and eye-pleasing ways that corresponded to the sanctity of the text.

Learn about the features and iconography that commonly identify a bodhisattva in art.

Standing Bodhisattva Maitreya (Buddha of the Future), 3rd century C.E., Pakistan (ancient region of Gandhara), gray schist, 163.2 x 53.3 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

Amulet case, 19th century, silver, Italy, 7.8 x 7.2 x 1 cm (MFA Boston)

From cradle to grave, and throughout all the seasons of the year, Jewish life is filled with ceremonies—celebrations of births and weddings, and the observance of holidays at home and in the synagogue (the central place of Jewish worship). Over time, specific objects developed for the performance of these rituals. Because Jewish law does not specify the form of these ceremonial objects, their design and ornamentation reflects the varied artistic styles of the cultures among which Jewish communities have lived. As a result, every object offers a window into Jewish ritual and cultural life in a distinct time and place.

Ceremonial art and Jewish law

Jewish law (halakhah), thoroughly prescribes many aspects of Jewish life, including the celebration of holidays and significant life events, such as births, weddings, and funerals. However, the only ceremonial objects entirely dictated by Jewish law are the Torah, the most sacred Jewish work containing the five books of Moses, and the parchment scrolls inscribed with verses from the Torah that are affixed to the doorposts of Jewish homes (the mezuzah) and worn by adult Jews during weekday morning prayers (tefillin). Their appearance and form has remained consistent across time as a result of the clear stipulations of halakhah.

In contrast, for all other ceremonial objects, the leniency of Jewish law allowed for the adoption of new and diverse artistic approaches. The creation and embellishment of ceremonial objects stemmed in large part from the concept of hiddur mitzvah (literally meaning the beautification of a commandment). According to this custom, individuals should strive to enhance a ritual by moving beyond the basic demands of the law, using beautiful and precious materials. This gave rise to rich visual traditions that reflected the varied experiences of Jewish communities across time and space.

Left: Candlesticks, c. 1866, silver, Germany, 35.9 × 13.7 × 13.7 cm (Jewish Museum); right: Kiddush cup and saucer, 1803, Ottoman Empire, silver, 8.3 x 7.4 x 7.4 cm (Jewish Museum)

Candlesticks, lamps, and goblets

Johann Valentin Schüler, Judenstern, 1680–1720, silver, Frankfurt am Main (Germany), 56.5 × 37.5 cm (Jewish Museum)

Nearly all Jewish holidays begin with the lighting of candles and the recitation of Kiddush (literally meaning sanctification), a blessing over wine, as a means of separating the mundane from the holy. While the rituals themselves—the required blessings, the precise timing, and the amount of wine, among other details—were prescribed, the forms that the candlesticks and wine goblet take is not specified. In fact, nearly any candlesticks or drinking vessel—from plain glass cups to ornate silver goblets—could be used.

In the medieval period, the Jewish community adapted for its own use a star-shaped hanging lamp which was commonly used for lighting houses throughout Germany and elsewhere in medieval Europe. Each lamp consisted of a shaft from which was suspended a star-shaped container for oil and wicks, and a basin below for catching dripping fuel. By the 19th century, the type was so closely associated with Jewish rituals that it was known as a Judenstern, or Jewish star.

Jewish law does not specify the form or decoration of the cup for the wine (known as a Kiddush cup). While modern Kiddush cups often incorporate Hebrew inscriptions (such as the text of the blessing over the wine), or related motifs (such as images of grapevines), this was not always the case. Often domestic glass and silver vessels were used as they were more affordable or readily available. This makes it difficult to identify drinking vessels belonging to members of the Jewish community or as having been used explicitly for Jewish ritual purposes. In many cases, oral and recorded family traditions are the only way we know that some seemingly mundane vessels were used as Kiddush cups. 

Shabbat

Havdalah spice container, c. 1550, silver, Frankfurt, 23.7 × 7.3 × 7.3 cm (Jewish Museum)

Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest is observed weekly from Friday night to Saturday night. In addition to refraining from work, it is a day intended for spiritual enrichment. Shabbat is welcomed with the ritual lighting of candles and the blessing of wine. The conclusion of Shabbat is marked with a similar ritual called havdalah (which literally means “separation”), which distinguishes between the holy Sabbath and the weekdays to come. The ceremony, performed both within the synagogue and at home, includes the recitation of blessings over a cup overflowing with wine, symbolic of the blessings for the upcoming week. The smelling of aromatic spices uplifts the soul before the week ahead, and the burning of a braided candle is symbolic of the distinction between light and darkness and the fire of the new week.

Special containers designed to hold spices are first described in Jewish sources in the 12th century. At this time, it was not unusual for Jews, Muslims, and Christians to create ritual objects for members of other faith communities. In this case, Christian silversmiths designed early spice containers based on vessels that they were familiar with from a Christian setting—such as censers, or incense burners which likewise let off aromatic odors in the performance of the Christian liturgy. Both censers and spice boxes were modeled on Gothic architecture. This 16th-century spice container is modeled on a four-story Gothic tower, incorporating rose windows on its third story, and pierced windows framed by an ogival arch on its fourth story, all capped by a pinnacle with four surrounding turrets.

Holidays

Passover

Left: Seder plate, c. 1480, ceramic lusterware, Spain, 57 cm (Israel Museum); right: Deep dish, c. 1430, ceramic lusterware, Valencia, Spain, 45.1 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Family at Passover Seder, Prato Haggadah, c. 1300, Barcelona (Jewish Theological Seminary)

In the spring, Jewish communities commemorate the exodus from Egypt (told in the second book of the Hebrew Bible, Exodus) at a ritual meal called a Seder, which marks the beginning of the Passover holiday. At the Seder, families use a book called a haggadah (plural: haggadot), which recounts the story of the Exodus. Elaborately illustrated haggadot began to be produced in the 14th century, giving birth to a rich and varied tradition of manuscript illumination and book printing for the Passover Seder.

The Seder plate, containing a variety of ceremonial foods which symbolize elements from the Passover story, adorns the center of the Seder table. Although Jewish law delineates the specific foods, it does not specify the container. The earliest known surviving seder plate dates to 15th-century Spain, where Sephardic Jews created ceramic lusterware plates specifically for the purpose of the Seder. Lusterware was an especially desirable, luxury medium in Spain, and across Europe. Once again, without any specifications for the Seder plate’s design, artisans turned to local visual traditions. Adorned with Hebrew inscriptions, this remarkable Seder plate testifies to the vibrant Jewish material culture of Spain prior to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal in 1492 and 1536, respectively. The tradition of decorating Seder plates spread throughout Europe, with artisans continuing to draw on local aesthetics and materials, making plates decorated with scenes from the Passover story, or of the Passover table and its guests. Modern Seder plates have incorporated contemporary artistic traditions, introduced humor, and made space for new ritual foods.

Hanukkah and Purim

Although likely among the most well-known Jewish holidays, Hanukkah and Purim are considered less significant, since they are not mentioned in the Torah, but were added to the cycle of the Jewish year by the rabbis in the 1st to 6th centuries.

Hanukkah lamp, 19th–early 20th-century, silver, Essaouira (?), Morocco, 27.7 x 30.4 x 10.3 cm (Jewish Museum)

The holiday of Hanukkah celebrates a group of Jewish rebel warriors (the Maccabees), who defeated the Greek army, and rededicated the Temple in Jerusalem, which had been defiled by the Greek army. During the cleansing of the Temple, they discovered that only a single jar of oil had survived to light the Temple’s menorah (candelabra). While it should have lasted only one night, the oil miraculously lasted for eight days. As a result, the central ritual of Hanukkah is the lighting of the hanukkiah (pl. hanukkiot) or Hanukkah lamp. Jewish law requires the lighting of eight candles, all set at the same level, customarily lit by a ninth light, (shamash) usually placed higher than the rest. Aside from these stipulations, the form of the hanukkiah is otherwise unspecified.

In 13th- and 14th-century Germany, Jewish artisans devised a new form for the hanukkiah—wall-hung lamps. Looking at examples of hanukkiot from around the world, we find that while this format continued to be used, it, as well as other forms, was adapted to local artistic traditions in each region. A hanukkiah from Morocco, for example, has a silver backplate adorned with incised rosettes with radiating petals as well as gilded rosettes soldered to the metal surface—both typical of jewelry produced in western Morocco in the 19th century.

Esther scroll with zodiac wheel, c. 1800, Ottoman Empire,5.9 x 72 cm (Braginsky Collection)

The holiday of Purim celebrates the survival of the Jews of Persia from the hands of the wicked Haman, principal minister to the King of the Persian Empire (also called the Achaemenid Empire), who plotted to exterminate all of Persia’s Jewish subjects. According to the biblical Book of Esther, a young Jewish woman named Esther, with the help of her cousin Mordechai, married the Persian king Ahasuerus and exposed Haman’s plans to him, saving her people. The story of Esther is read every year on Purim in synagogues around the world.

Beginning in the 16th century, miniature illustrated scrolls (megillot, singular: megillah) housed in ornate wooden and silver cases were created for members of the congregation to follow along during the service. An early 19th-century megillah from the Ottoman Empire opens with an image of the zodiac wheel. The zodiac was a popular motif in decorated megillot, as according to some interpretations, when Haman plotted to destroy the Jewish people, he consulted the zodiac to determine an auspicious time to carry out his scheme. He ultimately decided on the Hebrew month of Adar, which corresponds to the sign of the Pisces (fish). The illuminator of this Ottoman megillah  drew attention to Pisces, by illustrating the fish on a larger scale and outside of the zodiac wheel.

The rhythm of Jewish life

The major transitional stages of Jewish life—birth, marriage, and death, are likewise marked by ceremonies that create a time-honored framework.

Birth and circumcision

Parents’ hopes and dreams for their children as well as the anxieties of childbirth (particularly with the high infant mortality rates and dangers to the mother in the pre-modern world), fueled the production of an array of amulets and talismans intended to protect an expecting mother and her newborn. While this practice is found in many faith communities, Jewish amulets are distinctive in their use of Hebrew inscriptions, often drawn from traditional Jewish sources.

Amulet for the eastern wall for the protection of pregnant women and their newborns, 18th–19th century, ink on vellum, Kurdistan, 43 x 58cm (The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life)

For example, this early 19th-century paper amulet from either Iraqi Kurdistan or the Kurdish community in Jerusalem, together with three other paper amulets, was used to guard against infertility and infant death. At the center of the amulet, we see a throne surmounted by a winged creature, representing Lilith, a mythical character in Jewish tradition, who was believed to have been Adam’s first wife and who sought to hurt women in childbirth and their newborns. To balance out Lilith’s evil intentions, the names of Adam and Eve are inscribed on the throne, as well as the names of one of four angels believed to ward off Lilith—Sanoy, Sansanoy, Samengalaf, and Samangalon. Surrounding the central image are prayers, blessings, biblical quotations, names of God, and mystical formulae inscribed in Hebrew, Aramaic, and (Ladino or Judeo-Spanish). While Hebrew and Aramaic were the languages of religious tradition in the Jewish community of Kurdistan, the presence of Ladino suggests that this amulet was used by members of the Sephardic community living in Kurdistan—Jews who traced their ancestry to Spain and Portugal. Each of the four amulets was placed upon the walls of the birthing room and infant’s nursery, protecting the rooms from all sides. This amulet was used to protect the eastern wall, as “Samengalaf, the Prince of the East,” is inscribed within the center of the hybrid creature.

Torah binder (wimpel), Germany, 1750, linen and silk thread, 20.3 x 196.2 (Jewish Museum)

While amulets reflect a popular reaction to the dangers of daily life, the circumcision ceremony (performed on the eighth day of a baby boy’s life), dates back to biblical times. Symbolizing the covenant between God and the prophet Abraham, the ceremony marks the male child’s entrance into the Jewish covenant. In German-speaking lands, a unique tradition developed: the swaddling cloth used during the circumcision ceremony was transformed into a sacred object—a binder for the Torah scroll, meant to hold the staves of the Torah together when it was not in use. This binder, known as a wimpel, was elaborately embroidered with ornament and a lengthy inscription featuring the name of the child, the name of his father, and his Hebrew date of birth, followed by a blessing expressing the parents’ hopes for their child: “May he grow to [the study of] Torah, to chuppah (the wedding canopy), and to perform good deeds. Amen.” The family dedicated the wimpel to the synagogue, symbolically binding them to the Torah and the Jewish community. 

This 18th-century Torah binder from Germany features a colorfully embroidered Hebrew text surrounded by animal and vegetal ornament. Towards the conclusion of the inscription, the binder includes a depiction of a wedding ceremony as well as an open Torah scroll surmounted by a crown and the two Tablets of the Law, referencing the inscribed wishes for the child.

Depiction of a Jewish wedding ceremony with the bride and groom standing beneath a chuppah (wedding canopy) as they exchange rings. Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, The Wedding (Die Trauung), 1866, oil on canvas, 66 x 54.4 cm (Jewish Museum)

Weddings

Ketubah, Livorno, Italy, 1751, pen, ink, gouache, and gold paint on parchment, 53.3 x 34.5 cm (Jewish Museum)

While several of the items used in a Jewish wedding ceremonies are indistinguishable from those made for Christians (such as drinking vessels), some objects are singular in their association with Jewish weddings—marriage contracts (ketubot, singular: ketubah) and medieval Jewish wedding rings.

One of the most carefully prescribed elements of the Jewish marriage ceremony is the ketubah, initially created to protect the status and property of a wife in case of divorce, or upon the death of her husband. Jewish marriage contracts have survived from as early as the 5th century B.C.E., but their format as we know them today was largely developed during the 1st through 6th centuries C.E. In modern times, the text of the ketubah has been further modified by some Jewish communities to reflect a more egalitarian approach. Although a strictly legal document, over time, the decoration of the ketubah became a way to broadcast a family’s status, and to enhance and personalize the marriage ceremony.

Made in regions around the world, ketubot reflect the artistic traditions of the communities in which they were produced. An 18th-century ketubah from Livorno, Italy, for example, features an elaborate architectural frame decorated with colored marble inlay and two putti (angels) raising a cartouche with the biblical scene of the sacrifice of Isaac. The biblical image likely refers to the bride’s father, Isaac Yeshurun. However, the remainder of the ketubah’s decoration was modeled on the work of sculptor Giovanni di Isidoro Baratta,  who designed the altar for the Cathedral of San Ferdinando in Livorno as well as sculptural decoration for other churches in Livorno. He also designed the Synagogue of Livorno’s Torah ark, now destroyed. In this case, the ketubah not only draws upon the visual language then popular in Italy, which favored an exceptionally ornate aesthetic, but also refers to specific works of art visible in the city. The putti on the ketubah closely resemble those on the altar of the Cathedral of Livorno, while the colored inlay and decorative cartouches once appeared on the Torah ark.

Left: Jewish ceremonial wedding ring from the Colmar Treasure, c. 1300, before 1348, gold and enamel, made in Italy (?), 3.5 x 2.3 cm (Musée de Cluny); right: Jewish wedding ring, first half 14th century, gold, Germany, 4.8 x 2.5 x 2.5 cm (Thüringisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie, Weimar)

In the medieval period, a wedding ring developed that was specifically associated with Jewish wedding ceremonies. These rings are crowned by miniature buildings inscribed with the Hebrew phrase, mazel tov, meaning good luck, a wish commonly expressed at weddings. As marriage is often equated with the formation of a new household, the building crowning the ring is an apt symbol for the commitment between bride and groom. Most of these rings were discovered in the 19th century buried among personal and communal treasures. These items were likely buried in the 14th century, during the era of the Black Death which ravaged Afro-Eurasia. Many Jews were blamed and persecuted for the devastation that the plague brought. These treasures likely belonged to Jewish families and communities who fled persecution in the wake of the Plague. A ring discovered in Erfurt, Germany is a remarkable example of early 14th–century gold craftsmanship. It is surmounted by a Gothic-style building, and carried by two winged dragons, which form the ring’s hoop. Inside the house is a small golden ball which gently rings when it is moved.

Left: glass for a burial society’s annual banquet, 1713, glass, enamel paint, Prague, Bohemia, 24.5 x 15.7 cm (The Israel Museum); right: beaker of the burial society of Worms, Johann Conrad Weiss, 1711/12, hammered, engraved, and parcel-gilt silver, Nuremberg, Germany, 24.8 x 12.5 cm (Jewish Museum)

Mourning and Death

The end of life is marked by solemnity and reverence. The Jewish customs of death, burial, and yahrzeit (the anniversary of a death) are carefully planned to ease the pain of the bereaved. In many Jewish communities, an organized burial society (hevra kaddisha) prepares the deceased and arranges the burial.

During the second half of the 16th century, the rabbis of Prague formed the first modern Jewish burial society. Like European Christian guilds and confraternities the European Jewish burial societies likewise cared for the ill, the deceased, and the deceased’s families. Also like Christian guilds, the hevrot kaddisha held festive banquets and commissioned precious vessels, both glass and silver. One of the few surviving enameled glass beakers produced for the burial society of Prague on the occasion of the society’s annual banquet, depicts male mourners proceeding around the circumference of the glass in a funeral procession. Inscriptions on the glass refer to death and mourning as well as the imperative to drink wine in celebration of life.

In the 18th century, the Burial Society of Worms, commissioned a leading silversmith, Johann Conrad Weiss, from the distant city of Nuremberg to create a silver beaker for their society. Twenty years later, when the society’s membership had grown, they commissioned a second beaker, this time made by a local silversmith. Beakers such as these were used to induct members into the society at the annual banquet. At the conclusion of the meal, new members were invited to drink wine from the ceremonial cup. 

Left: memorial lamp (kandil), 19th century, Anti-Atlas Mountains, Morocco, 38.1 x 19.1 x 16.5 cm (Jewish Museum); right: memorial lamps in the Reuven Ben Sadoun Synagogue, Des, 1920 (Ariel Fein, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

In North Africa, for one year following an individual’s death, it was customary for family members to light a memorial lamp inscribed with the deceased’s name at home on Shabbat and holidays. Following the conclusion of the memorial year, the lamp was donated to the local synagogue. Together with other memorial lamps, their light served to continually remind the members of the congregation of their departed loved ones.

Whether for the observance of holidays or lifecycle events, ceremonial objects have become an essential element of Jewish visual culture. The remarkable diversity of these works, informed by the many communities among whom Jews have lived, are evidence of this vibrant Jewish artistic tradition.

Torah crown (keter), Andrea Zambelli ‘L’Honnesta,’ c. 1740–50, silver, parcel gilt, Venice, 27.5 x 31.4 x 31.4 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

This remarkable silver crown, lavishly decorated with scrolling forms and an overabundance of flowers and vegetation, is surely fit for a king. However, this crown was not created to sit atop the head of a monarch, but to adorn a Torah—a scroll containing the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. The Torah’s luxurious adornments and its centrality in the synagogue (the place of Jewish worship) all indicate the Torah’s place as the holiest object in Judaism.

The Jewish people are known as the “people of the Book,” referring to the intimate connection between the Jews and the Torah. The Torah is the physical expression of the Jewish people’s connection with God and the centerpiece of the Jewish liturgy. On a typical day in a synagogue, you might see one or more Torah scrolls removed from the Torah ark, a central cabinet on the eastern wall of the synagogue, orienting prayer in the direction of Jerusalem. Typically, the scrolls are always dressed in ornate garments (a fabric or hard case) and decorated with ornamental finials and/or a crown surmounting their staves—all adornments intended to highlight the sanctity of the Torah.

Procession of Torahs in The Feast of the Rejoicing of the Law at the Synagogue in Leghorn, Solomon Alexander Hart, 1850, oil on canvas, Italy, 141.3 x 174.6 cm (Jewish Museum)

As the Torah is removed from the ark and processed throughout the synagogue on Shabbat, the congregation rises, honoring the Torah just as one might honor a king or queen. At this time, the adornments of the Torah are removed, so that portions can be read aloud each week (the entire Torah is read consecutively each year). Once the reading is complete, the Torah is redressed and once again paraded throughout the synagogue before being returned to the ark. This essay explores the vibrant artistic tradition that developed around the Torah and its decoration.

Hiddur Mitzvah: Beautifying the Torah

Torah ark with Torah ark curtain, tik, and dressed Torahs, Temple Beth Shalom, New Jersey (Ariel Fein, CC BY-SA 2.0)

The writing of the Torah scroll is subject to precise rules that allow little room for creativity. As a result of the clear stipulations of Jewish law (halakhah), the appearance and form of the Torah has remained consistent across time. The Torah is handwritten on parchment sheets sewn together to produce a long scroll. The ends of the scroll are affixed to and wound on staves (wooden rollers). Never decorated, the Torah scroll is above all a text, rather than a work of art. It is considered to be the word of God, and as such, the written word acquired unparalleled significance. Its unchanging appearance lends both authenticity and authority to the text. 

However, because of its central place in Jewish liturgy, the Torah also inspired the creation of many types of Jewish ceremonial art intended to both protect the scroll against any damage as well as to enhance its appearance. These objects, through their proximity to the Torah, became sacred objects themselves. 

The impetus for their creation and embellishment stemmed in large part from a custom that developed in the 3rd–6th centuries called hiddur mitzvah, literally meaning the beautification of a commandment. According to this principle, Jews should enhance a ritual—whether the reading of the Torah, or the observance of a holiday, among others—by moving beyond the basic demands of the law and using beautiful and precious materials. This interest in glorifying rituals gave rise to a rich visual tradition reflecting the varied experiences of Jewish communities across time and space. Let’s take a look at how Torah scrolls were embellished as part of this tradition of hiddur mitzvah.

Torah niche from the synagogue, 3rd century C.E., Dura Europos, Syria (Yale University Art Gallery)

Containing the Torah: The Torah Ark and its curtains

To protect and preserve the Torah scrolls, ornate stone and wooden cabinets, known as Torah arks, were built in synagogues. Described as a “holy ark” (aron hakodesh) or a “shrine of holiness” (heikhal hakodesh), they became the focal point of the synagogue’s furnishings. The design of the Torah arks often reflects local architectural forms. For example, the earliest Torah arks, known from the 2nd century C.E., imitated niches used by polytheistic communities in the ancient Roman Empire for the veneration of a statue (of the emperor or deity) or sacred object. An early 3rd-century painted niche in the synagogue of Dura Europos (in what is today Syria) followed this form. Just as the polytheistic niches were typically crowned by a conch shell (a symbol of sanctity), so too is the open niche for the Torah crowned by a conch. Four holes in the niche’s surface indicate that a curtain was used to cover the opening of the niche.

Open Torah niches in the background, Great Synagogue, Bukhara, 1896 (Elkan Nathan Adler)

In regions where the Torah ark was designed as an open niche, the Torah scroll itself was kept in a wooden or metal cylindrical case with a flat bottom called a tik (discussed more below). While most open niche Torah arks were eventually closed with doors, in some Sephardic and Mizrachi communities, the niche remained open into the 20th century, as in the Great Synagogue in Bukhara, where we see two open Torah niches housing tiks with textiles suspended from their finials, a custom practiced in many Mediterranean, and Central and West Asian communities. 

Torah ark, Grande Scuola Tedesca, founded 1528, Venice (Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Closed Torah arks were often based on gate-shaped structures and placed on an elevated platform to suggest the ark as a gateway to heaven and add to its venerated character. In this Torah ark from the Grande Scuola Tedesca, one of the five extant synagogues in the Venetian Ghetto, the three-part Torah ark takes the form of an architectural style popularized in Italy by 16th-century Venetian Architect, Andrea Palladio. Palladio looked back to ancient Roman architecture and we see that reflected in the central section of the ark. Its two fluted Corinthian columns support, in the top center, a broken pediment  (a pediment open or broken at the apex) decorated with urns and cornucopia. The doors of the ark are decorated on their exterior with the motif of the tree of life, while on their interior they feature the text of the Ten Commandments.

Torah ark curtain (parokhet), 1676, linen embroidered with silk and silver-gilt-thread and bordered with silver-gilt fringe, Venice, 190.5 x 165 cm (Victoria & Albert Museum)

A curtain called a parokhet  hangs in front of the Torah scrolls within the Torah ark. Not only a decorative object, the curtain was meant to evoke the curtain that once hung in the ancient Tabernacle and the Temple in Jerusalem. Before the synagogue became the central space for Jewish spiritual, social, and communal life, the Tabernacle and later the Temple served as the focal point of the Jewish community. However, following the destruction of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem by the Roman army in 70 C.E., synagogues emerged as its substitute. In its liturgy and decoration, the synagogue adapted and evoked many of the rituals and symbols of the ancient Temple. 

The Torah ark curtain is one example of this evocation of the ancient Temple—just as a curtain once hung before the holiest space in the Temple (which housed the two Tablets of the Law), so too does the synagogue curtain hang before the holiest space of the synagogue, before the Torah scrolls. Moreover, just as the Temple parokhet was made from the most sumptuous materials of the time, so too is the Torah ark curtain made from luxurious fabrics, such as intricately woven carpets and precious silks. 

Torah Ark Curtain (parokhet), c. 1735, silk, embroidered with silk and metallic thread; metallic thread lace border, Istanbul, Turkey, 174 x 161.9 cm (Jewish Museum)

Torah ark curtains were also fashioned from repurposed or reused textiles. One example of reuse can be seen in an 18th-century silk and metallic thread Torah curtain from Turkey which features two large twisted columns flanking a central embroidered image of a mosque, (specifically the Blue Mosque, Sultan Ahmet Camii, in Istanbul with its six narrow minarets). Above is a small hamsa, a hand-shaped sign popular in both Muslim and Jewish contexts, as well as a Hebrew inscription dedicating the curtain to a local Istanbul synagogue. The hamsa and Hebrew inscription are visibly poorer in quality, suggesting that the textile was originally made for use in Istanbul by a Muslim and later acquired by the synagogue, when the inscription was added. For a Jewish resident of Istanbul, the Blue Mosque was a prominent part of the skyline, so the Torah curtain celebrated their city, while also providing the synagogue with an exceptionally precious embroidered textile to adorn its Torah ark. 

Left: Bridal dress (bindalli), early 20th century, velvet, gilt metal threads, Edirne, Turkey (Israel Museum); center: A bride wearing the bindal dress after the wedding, early 20th century, Ruschuk (?), Turkey (Israel Museum); right: Torah ark curtain made from a woman’s dress, inscribed in Hebrew with dedication in memory of Jacob Him son of Mazal Tov, dedicated in 1929, velvet silk in a satin cotton frame, Izmir, Turkey, 185 x 156 cm (Israel Museum)

In the late 19th century, it was a common practice for Sephardic Jews in the Ottoman Empire to donate fabrics, such as bed coverings, pillowcases, or wedding dresses, to be reused as textiles within the synagogue. By donating such personal fabrics, donors ensured the preservation of their memory or their loved ones in the most sacred space of the synagogue. For example, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jewish women adopted a new style of wedding dress then popular among the Turkish elite—the bindalli dress which was embroidered with flowers spreading from vases and other vegetal motifs on a dark velvet garment. Here, it was refashioned as a synagogue Torah ark curtain. As a result, the item of dress became a part of the community, permanently perpetuating the bride’s memory within the synagogue.

Tik, 1898 (date of inscription), silver, Baghdad (?) (Ariel Fein, CC BY-SA 2.0)

Wrapping the Torah: tik and mantle

As mentioned above, elaborate wooden containers (called tiks) and textile covers were developed to protect the Torah scrolls. Their design was informed both by the approach to the storage and use of the Torah in the liturgy. In some Sephardic and Mizrachi communities (Jews who trace their ancestry from the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa and West Asia, respectively), that used closed Torah arks, the form of the tik is suited to  their specific reading style. During the public reading of the Torah in these communities, the hinged wooden case is stood upright on a table and opened to reveal the scroll wound on two rollers inside.

From left: Open Torah scroll with finials, Torah scroll wrapped with binder, Torah finial, Torah scroll dressed with mantle, Bernard Picart, 1725, Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde, engraving (College of Charleston Libraries)

In contrast, Ashkenazi communities (Jews who trace their ancestry to medieval France and Germany) drape the Torah scroll with a mantle, or a textile covering. During their worship services, the Torah scroll is laid flat on a reader’s table (tevah) with the staves of the Torah extending both above and below the scroll. As a result, the Torah mantle offered a fitting decorative cover that was easily removable prior to reading the text. As a removable object, many communities replace the Torah mantle used throughout the year (as well as the Torah ark curtain) with a white textile during the High Holidays. White is a symbol of purity and atonement, and is therefore appropriate to the penitential tenor of the holidays.

Embellishing the Torah: Finials and crowns

Torah finials (rimonim), c. 1863, silver, Iraqi Kurdistan, 25.5 cm (Israel Museum)

In addition to the Torah case, other objects were created to adorn and beautify the Torah, such as finials (rimonim), made from wood and silver, which are placed on top of the staves upon which the scroll is bound. While many rimonim are topped with round forms (likely due to the meaning of the Hebrew word rimon, or pomegranate), others, often North African and Sephardic or Sephardic-inspired finials, take the form of a tower, a motif often used to represent the Heavenly City of Jerusalem by Jews and Christians since the 4th century C.E. Bells often adorn rimonim, and may refer to the description in the Torah of the bells worn by Aaron, the High Priest in the Temple of Jerusalem. 

A set of rimonim from Kurdistan feature spherical forms atop elongated staves. The two halves of the spheres can be separated, and the bottom filled with water. By virtue of the water’s proximity to the Torah, it was believed to become holy and could be used to help a mother during childbirth. 

Left: Torah finials, (rimonim) and crown, Andrea Zambelli ‘L’Honnesta,’ c. 1740–50, silver, parcel gilt, Venice, 67.8 × 15.2 × 15.2 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art); right: Torah Crown, Moshe Zabari, 1969, silver, pearls on strings, New York, 40.6 x 26.8 x 22.5 cm (Jewish Museum) 

The Torah crown (keter) is another important embellishment for the Torah typically modeled on the regalia of kings and queens to visually proclaim the significance of the Torah, often described as a “princess” or “bride.” Crowns can be used either in addition to or in place of rimonim, encircling the staves of the Torah. On the left, a set of Venetian silverwork rimonim and a paired Torah crown were commissioned together to be donated to an Italian synagogue and  bear similar ornamentation. In contrast, the Moshe Zabari’s modern take on a Torah crown fuses the form of the Torah crown with rimonim, by reducing the rimonim and Torah crown to their most essential forms—the tubes fitted over the staves and the exuberant curves with suspended pearls that twist around them.

Left: Torah shield, 1867–72, silver, Vienna, Austria, 36.9 x 32.1 cm (Jewish Museum); right: Torah pointer (yad), 1872–1922, silver, coral, and semi-precious stones, Vienna, 4.4 x 22.9 x 4.4 cm (Jewish Museum)

Using the Torah: Shields and pointers

Torah dressed with pointer (yad), crown, rimonim, and mantle, Simeon Solomon, Carrying the scrolls of the Law, 1871, oil on canvas, 77 x 61 cm (private collection)

Other ceremonial objects related to the Torah addressed practical needs. The yad, or pointer, allows readers to follow the text without damaging the scroll with their hands. Often, the yad terminates in the figure of a hand pointing at the text. 

Many synagogues own several Torah scrolls, both as a sign of the congregation’s prestige as well as for ease of use during the annual liturgy. As holidays require readings from different portions of the Torah (unrelated to the sequential weekly reading), it can become cumbersome to have to roll the Torah scroll to the appropriate place. The Torah shield developed in the 16th century as a decorative plaque hung around the Torah that could help readers identify the section to which a scroll was turned. Interchangeable silver plates with the names of holiday readings could be affixed to the shield. In an example from 19th-century Vienna the plate indicates the reading for the holiday of Sukkot. Although the Torah shield originated as a functional object, by the early 19th century, it had become purely ornamental, often decorated with motifs referring to the Torah ark and the holy scrolls contained within—a crown, the Tablets of the Law engraved with the Ten Commandments, and framed by lions, griffins and other creatures, meant to represent God’s entourage, among others. 

Whether according to Jewish law or popular Jewish belief, the Torah emerged as the most sacred tangible Jewish object, and by extension, the ceremonial objects that developed alongside it became implements of holiness. [1]

How to identify the Christian figures of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John by their iconography, or symbols, in art.

A conversation about the iconography of the Four Evangelists while standing before Andrea da Giona, Altarpiece with Christ, Saint John the Baptist, and Saint Margaret, 1434, Carrara marble, 182.9 x 203.2 x 12.7 cm (The Cloisters, part of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Standing Buddha, 15th century, Thailand, gilt bronze, 156.2 cm high (The Metropolitan Museum of Art); and Seated Buddha, 15th century, Thailand, bronze, 68.6 x 48.9 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Scroll of Mudras, 11th–12th century, Japan, hand scroll, ink on paper, 28.4 x 247.6 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Buddha from Gandhara, c. 2nd–3rd century C.E., Gandhara, schist (Tokyo National Museum)

Mudras are a set of hand gestures and finger positions that serve as symbols in Buddhist art, representing the Buddha’s various roles and states of mind. Mudras were first seen in statues from Gandhara in the first century, and appear to have been codified by the third century (mudra means “seal” or “sign” in Sanskrit).

The fingers of the hand are thought to represent five levels of consciousness needed to attain buddhahood, therefore various gestural configurations are seen as syntheses of these factors. Mudras also represent the dominant themes in particular episodes of the Buddha’s life, making the gestures useful as narrative and pedagogical devices for viewers familiar with the symbolism. They are typically shown being performed by figures of religious authority such as the Buddha and bodhisattvas.

Of the large number of gestures that had subsequently evolved, the five primary mudras are the

1. the abhaya mudra (the most common)
2. the dharmachakra mudra
3. the bhumisparsha mudra
4. the varada mudra
5. the dhyana mudra

Also common in Buddhist iconography are the vitarka mudra, the bodhyagri mudra, and the vajrapradama mudra, and anjali mudra (also discussed in this essay, #6)—all variations or derivations of the five main mudras.

Mudras are also found in Hindu and Jain iconography, albeit to a lesser extent and only after being established in Buddhism. Classical dance forms, particularly those in India that have emerged in association with religion, also feature a repertoire of mudras.

1. The abhaya mudra

This Buddha gestures compassionate protection to devotees (abhaya mudra) with his raised right hand. Buddha Offering Protection, 10th century, Sri Lanka, central plateau, copper alloy with gilding, 60.3 x 17.8 x 10.2 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

One of the five commonly depicted mudras in Buddhism, the abhaya mudra is associated with the fifth Dhyani-Buddha, Amoghasiddhi. The gesture symbolizes peace and friendship, and denotes the acts of pacification, reassurance or protection. It is performed using either the right hand or both hands, with the fingers outstretched, with the palms slightly cupped and facing the viewer. When it is performed using only the right hand, the left hand usually hangs loosely by the side of the body or assumes the varada mudra.

This mudra is one of the most widely used symbolic and ritual gestures across Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism and Buddhism. Across Southeast Asia, depictions of deities, saints, great teachers, or gurus, show them in the benevolent abhaya mudra, making it a recognizable gesture and an indicator of divine associations.

It appears most significantly within Buddhist art, in murals, sculpture, thangkas, and popular prints, lending particular symbolic meaning to its context. When it is made with the left hand, as is common in Theravada Buddhism, it is thought to denote a warning or a command to halt. This interpretation is based on a popular Buddhist story in which the Buddha stopped the advances of a rampaging elephant released by a spiteful Devdutta—his nephew and disciple—by extending his hand in the abhaya mudra. In another incident, the Buddha uses the mudra to resolve a water dispute within a family.

There have been minor inflections in how the mudra is represented across different periods. In Gandharan art, for instance, the hand forming the gesture is held up at the shoulder level, but in later periods, from the fifth century C.E. onwards, the hand begins to dip until it is at hip level. Though primarily seen in representations of the standing Amoghasiddhi, it is also associated with the walking Buddha in the Theravada sects of Thailand and Laos.

2. The dharmachakra mudra

Buddha in dharmachakra mudra, c. 9th/10th century C.E., bronze, 23.8 x 12.2 x 7.9 cm (Indian Museum, Kolkata)

The most common of the five main mudras in Buddhist art, the dharmachakra mudra is used across various sects and is associated with the first Dhyani-Buddha, Vairochana, who is one of the five aspects of Buddha according to the Tibetan concept of the five-Buddha families.

The mudra gets its name from its association with the eponymous dharmachakra or “wheel of law,” and is a reference to the Buddha’s first sermon at Sarnath. It is formed by arranging the fingers and hands in a particular way in order to evoke particular spiritual states as well as values that the Buddha taught. Both the hands are held at the chest level, with the thumbs of each hand touching the respective index fingers to form a wheel-like shape. The tips of these two wheels in turn touch each other in such a way that the palm of the left hand faces inwards, while that of the right hand, held slightly higher, faces outwards.

When displayed by Vairochana, this mudra is meant to convey the dispelling of ignorance with the wisdom of reality, represented by the action of setting the dharmachakra into motion through the act of teaching. According to some interpretations, the three extended fingers of the right hand are believed to represent the three vessels, or yanas, of the Mahayana Buddhism tradition, while those of the left hand are thought to denote the capacities for following these yanas. The symbolism is further extended to the open palms, of which the right suggests the method of conveying teachings and the left suggests the gaining of wisdom through the internalization of these teachings. When the left hand is shown holding a corner of the robe, as in early iconic representations, it symbolizes renunciation.

A variant and possible derivative of the dharmachakra mudra is the vitarka mudra, also a “teaching” mudra. In forming this gesture, the right hand is held at the chest level, palm turned outwards, and fingers upwards with the thumb touching the index finger (a representation of the wheel of law), while the left hand lies on the lap with the palm upturned. In some versions, the left hand is also held at the hip level with fingers pointing downwards, palm outwards and the thumb and index finger forming the symbolic dharmachakra.

3. The bhumisparsha mudra

The Buddha reaches his right hand down in bhumisparsha mudra, marking the moment when he called upon the earth goddess to witness his resistance of the forces of Mara, prior to experiencing enlightenment. Akshobhya, the Buddha of the Eastern Pure Land, 16th–17th century, Nepal, terracotta, 50.8 x 37 5 x 16.5 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

A symbolic gesture in Buddhist iconography and practice—and one of five common mudras in Buddhist art—the bhumisparsha mudra symbolizes the moment of inception of the Buddha, when the prince Siddhartha attained enlightenment under the pipal tree (also known as the bodhi tree). Literally translated to “earth touching mudra,” it is also often referred to as the “earth witness” and is usually associated with the Dhyani-Buddha Akshobhya.

The figure depicting the mudra is always shown in the seated position, with the right hand reaching over the knee so that all five fingers extend downwards to touch the earth. Representing unshakability, the bhumisparsha mudra is symbolic of the triumph of the spirit over matter and its liberation from worldly trappings. The gesture is believed to be an invocation of the earth goddess, who witnessed the Buddha’s ascendance to the state of enlightenment. When this gesture of the right hand is combined with the placement of the upturned left hand on the lap, in the dhyana mudra, it is thought to signify the union of skillful means, or upaya, and wisdom, or prajna.

The mudra is also thought to proclaim the defeat of temptation and evil intention, personified by the demon king Mara, and challenge his supremacy. The defeat of Mara is an important episode in Buddhist art canon and is a popular narrative. According to the story, Mara tried to frighten and distract Siddhartha with armies of demons and the seductions of his daughters. Claiming the throne of enlightenment for himself, Mara produced his army as witnesses to this claim. In response, Siddhartha reached out and touched the ground in a gesture that declared the earth as his witness. The moral triumph over evil is also therefore built into the symbolism of the mudra.

Some traditions hold that the bhumisparsha mudra was used by Akshobhya to transform the delusion of anger into the mirror of wisdom. This signification is borne out in Buddhist teachings, in which a mastery over one’s senses and emotions is often emphasized as a means to achieve true awakening. The bhumisparsha mudra is an important mudra, as it refers to the very moment of achievement of buddhahood.

4. The varada mudra

Standing Buddha, 12th century, Japan, wood, gold leaf, lacquer, and textile, 209.3 cm high (National Museum of Asian Art)

One of the five common mudras in Buddhist art, the varada mudra is associated with the third Dhyani-Buddha Ratnasambhava and is seen extensively in statues of the Buddha across Southeast Asia. It is depicted or performed in both the sitting and standing positions and is commonly known as the “boon-granting” mudra, or dana mudra. In India, this mudra makes its earliest appearance in depictions of Avalokitesvara during the fourth and fifth centuries.

Although the varada mudra is popularly thought to denote generosity or the fulfilling of boons or vows, it is also linked to the aspect of salvation and deliverance due to its frequent depiction in divine personages whose purpose is the liberation of humankind from greed, anger and delusion.

The mudra is almost always depicted using the left hand, with the palm and all five fingers angled downward and facing the viewer.

When displayed in the standing position, the left arm is extended downwards and slightly away from the body, and bent at the elbow, with the mudra performed at waist-height. In the seated position, the gesture is usually depicted at the level of the chest. In some interpretations, the extended fingers also have symbolic value, connoting the five perfections (paramitas) of generosity, morality, patience, perseverance and meditative focus.

When rendered as a two-handed gesture, the accompanying mudra performed with the right hand is typically the abhaya mudra. As a composite, this gesture is thought to imply the conceptual union of the female and male aspects of wisdom and agency respectively.

5. The dhyana mudra

Figure of a seated bodhisattva, 14th century, Tibet, brass with silver and copper inlay, 36.5 x 23 x 11 cm (National Museum of Asian Art)

Referring to the prince Siddhartha meditating under the pipal tree before he achieved enlightenment, the dhyana mudra is one of the five common mudras in Buddhist art. Dhyana, meaning “meditation” in Sanskrit, denotes a state of concentration and is most commonly associated with the fourth Dhyani-Buddha Amitabha. Also known as yoga mudra, it is thought to have developed as an iconographic element in Gandhara, although the gesture was prevalent in yogic practices much earlier.

The dhyana mudra is performed in the seated padmasana (cross-legged) position and is usually depicted using both hands, with the hands held at the level of the stomach and resting on the thigh or lap; the right hand, with all fingers fully extended is placed palm-up over the similarly placed left hand. The orientation of the thumbs differ in different traditions. In India, the thumbs are parallel to the other fingers and each other, while in the Wei Buddhist tradition of China, they are angled outwards slightly to form a triangle, which symbolizes the Three Jewels of Buddhism. The overlapping arrangement is meant to suggest that method or means (denoted by the right hand) can only arise out of the wisdom of meditation (denoted by the left hand). Some traditions also interpret the hand placed on top as signifying realization or enlightenment and the hand underneath as the world of appearances, suggesting that meditation is a means to achieve the former by transcending over the latter.

In certain instances, the mudra is made using the left hand, which is placed on the lap, with the palm facing upward and represents the principle of wisdom or meditative void. Occasionally ritualistic objects such as a text or a bowl of alms may be placed on the upturned hand—for instance, in certain representations of Bhaisajyaguru, or the “Medicine Buddha,” who has a medicine bowl in his hands.

Popular in Theravada Buddhism, it is also depicted and practiced in a variant form known as samadhi mudra, in which the index fingers and thumb of the overlapping hands are raised to meet each other.

6. The anjali mudra

Figure of a bodhisattva, 19th century, Japan, bronze, 17 cm high (National Museum of Asian Art)

One of the stylized hand gestures, or mudras, commonly found in Buddhist and Hindu iconography, the anjali mudra denotes respect and devotion. It is made by placing the palms together in front of the chest, with the fingers aligned vertically and, in some cases, the thumbs pointed backwards. Within Buddhism, the anjali mudra is particularly associated with the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. In his four-armed, eight-armed and thousand-armed forms, Avalokiteshvara is often depicted with his palms slightly opened and forming a cup shape during the anjali mudra.

In some cases, the anjali mudra may represent humility and surrender, especially when featured in Hindu narratives. Within Buddhist art, however, the anjali mudra depicts an act of devotion and great respect. It is, therefore, shown being performed by figures such as bodhisattvas and kings when they face the Buddha, but rarely by the Buddha himself. Furthermore, while the anjali mudra is visually akin to the namaste or namaskar gesture, there is a significant difference in the context of each gesture. The namaste is performed as a greeting in everyday life, conveying degrees of respect, and—unlike the anjali mudra—it does not always signify reverence or devotion. While the two terms are often treated as interchangeable, in the case of Buddhist art, anjali mudra is the more appropriate descriptor.

Representations of the anjali mudra have been largely consistent in sculpture and painting in the Indian subcontinent since at least the first century B.C.E. One variation, which is seen in some relief sculptures, features the wrists twisted in such a way that the back of the right palm faces the viewer. The significance of this variation remains unclear. In Vajrayana and other eastern forms of Buddhism, Shadakshari Lokeshvara (or the four-armed Avalokiteshvara) is believed to hold a gem—representing love and enlightenment—in the slight space between his palms during the anjali mudra. The gem is only visible to Shadakshari Lokeshvara when he performs it; the mudra’s concealment of the gem is believed to represent the deeply personal nature of enlightenment, and its invisibility to those who only perceive the world in material terms.

Drawing from articles on The MAP Academy

Zoroastrianism is one of the world’s oldest known living religions and has its origins in the distant past. It developed about three and a half thousand years ago from the ancient Indo-Iranian religion that was once shared by the ancestors of nomadic herding tribes that later settled in Iran and northern India. Zoroastrianism thus shares a common heritage with the Vedic religion of Ancient India and Hinduism. It is thought to have taken root in Central Asia during the second millennium B.C.E., and from there spread south to Iran. In particular, the regions of Sistan and the Helmand basin play an important part in Zoroastrian imagery, suggesting that this area was a center of Zoroastrianism from early on. Zoroastrianism became the foremost religion of the Achaemenid (550–330 B.C.E.), Parthian (247 B.C.E.–224 C.E.) and Sasanian (224–651 C.E.) empires, engaging with the religions of the Jews and with nascent Christianity and Islam.

Zoroastrianism lost its dominant position when the Arabs invaded and defeated the Sasanian Empire, although it lived on especially in rural areas of Iran until the Turkish and Mongol invasions in the 11th and 13th centuries. It was only then that Zoroastrians withdrew to the desert towns of Kerman and Yazd. Today they form a religious minority in Iran of 10–30,000 persons. Soon after the Arab conquest of Iran in 651 C.E., there was an exodus of Zoroastrians from Iran to the Indian subcontinent where they settled and became known as the Parsis, and became an influential minority under British Colonial rule. From there Zoroastrians migrated to other parts of the world especially Britain, America, and Australia, where they form diaspora communities today.

What do Zoroastrians believe?

Zoroastrians believe that their religion was revealed by their supreme God, called Ahura Mazda, or ‘Wise Lord’, to a priest called Zarathustra (or Zoroaster, as the Greeks called him). Zarathustra is held to be the founder of the religion, and his followers call themselves Zartoshtis or Zoroastrians. Central to Zoroastrianism is the profound dichotomy between good and evil, and the idea that the world was created by God, Ahura Mazda, in order that the two forces could engage with one another and the evil one will be incapacitated. With this is the belief in an afterlife that is determined by the choices people make while on earth, the final and definitive defeat of evil at the end of time and a restoration of the world to its once perfect state.

What are the key sacred texts of Zoroastrianism?

These religious ideas are encapsulated in the sacred texts of the Zoroastrians and assembled in a body of literature called the Avesta. Composed in an ancient Iranian language, Avestan, the Avesta is made up of different texts, most of which are recited in the Zoroastrian rituals, some of them by priests only, others by both priests and laypeople. These texts were composed orally at different times, and the oldest of them, the so-called Gathas, or ‘songs’ of Zarathustra, the Yasna Haptanghaiti and two prayers, probably date from some time in the mid- to late second millennium B.C.E. These texts are referred to as Older Avesta as their language is more archaic than that of the rest. The Younger Avesta is not only linguistically more recent, but also much greater in volume and shows a more advanced stage of the religion’s development. The Gathas are traditionally attributed to Zarathustra, the eponymous founder of the Zoroastrian tradition. All Avestan texts were composed and transmitted orally, although presumably from the late Sasanian period onwards there also existed a written tradition.

A 17th-century Iranian copy of the Zoroastrian manual for the Yasna ritual. The Avestan text of this manuscript includes ritual instructions in Pahlavi written in red ink. This 17th-century copy was written in Iran. It was probably the first Zoroastrian sacred text to be brought to England. The Avestan Yasna sādah, early 17th century, (Arundel Or 54, British Library)

The poetic power of these texts, which are at the heart of the Avesta or Zoroastrian sacred literature, can still be appreciated today. The five Gathas consist of seventeen hymns, which together with the Yasna Haptanghaiti form the central portion of the key ritual of the Zoroastrian tradition, the Yasna of seventy-two chapters. The daily Yasna ceremony, which priests are still required to learn and recite by heart, is the most important of all Zoroastrian rituals. Folios 96-97 of this copy of the Yasna sādah, or ‘pure’ Yasna (i.e. the Avestan text without any commentary), contain the end of Yasna 43 and the beginning of Yasna 44. Arguably one of the most poetic sections of the whole Avesta, Yasna 44, consists of rhetorical questions posed to Ahura Mazda about the creation of the universe, such as who established the path of the sun and the stars, who made the moon wax and wane, and who holds the earth down below and prevents the clouds from falling down? The implied answer, of course, is that Ahura Mazda has arranged all of this.

An illustrated copy of the Avestan Vīdēvdād Sādah, the longest of all the Zoroastrian liturgies. Copied in Yazd, Iran, in 1647 (RSPA 230, British Library)

The Khordah Avesta (‘small Avesta’) contains prayers, hymns and invocations recited by priests and lay people in daily worship. This image shows the first page of a manuscript which begins with the Yatha ahu vairyo (‘Just as he is to be chosen by life’) and the Ashem vohū (‘Good order’), two of the holiest Zoroastrian prayers. 1673 (Royal MS 16 B VI, British Library)

Writing the ritual instructions in red ink helped the priests to navigate through the manuscript. Very few existing manuscripts also show illustrations. The British Library is home to one of them. It is a beautifully written and decorated copy of a ceremony called the Vīdēvdād, and shows seven coloured illuminations, all of trees. The manuscript was copied in Yazd, Iran, for a Zoroastrian of Kirman in 1647. The heading here has been decorated very much in the style of an illuminated Islamic manuscript.

The Vīdēvdād, or Vendidād as it is also known, is chiefly concerned with reducing pollution in the material world and represents a vital source for our knowledge and understanding of Zoroastrian purity laws. Folio 151 verso shows the beginning of chapter nine of the Zoroastrian law-book, which concerns the nine-night purification ritual (barashnum nuh shab) for someone who has been defiled by contact with a dead body.

The Yasna, Vīdēvdād and other rituals are recited and performed by priests inside the fire-temple. In addition, the Younger Avesta comprises devotional texts recited by both priest and lay members of the community, male and female alike. There are twenty-one hymns, or Yashts (Yt), dedicated to a variety of divinities whose praise is not only legitimised, but demanded by Ahura Mazda, who presides over them all. In the Zoroastrian calendar, each of the thirty days of the month is dedicated to one particular deity whose name it bears and whose hymn, or Yasht, is recited on that day.

The individual deities are also invoked for particular tasks. Mithra, for instance, is the deity who watches over contracts, while Anahita is especially close to women and helps them conceive and give birth. In addition, there are short prayers, blessings and other texts collected in the Small, or Khordah, Avesta.

This is a copy of the Vīdēvdād accompanied by its Pahlavi translation and interpretation. It is one of the oldest existing Zoroastrian manuscripts, copied in 1323 in Nawsari, Gujarat. In this manuscript, each sentence is given first in the original Avestan (Old Iranian) language, and then in Pahlavi (Middle Persian), the language of Sasanian Iran (Avestan MS 4, British Library)

In addition to manuscripts providing the Avestan texts to be recited in the rituals, there is a second group of bilingual manuscripts, which give the Avestan text together with its translation into Pahlavi.

As the tradition of the Avesta was entirely oral, its translation and explanation would have been memorized together with the Avesta, although the exegesis, called Zand, was more flexible and open to being altered and expanded. The Avesta was eventually written down in an alphabet designed especially for this purpose and developed on the basis of a cursive form of the Pahlavi script. The tradition of the Avesta and its exegesis that has come down to the present day is that of the province of Pars, the centre of imperial and priestly power during the Sasanian era. The Avesta script was invented artificially, presumably around 600 C.E., in the province of Pars in order to write down the sound of the recitation at a time when the meaning of the texts had long been forgotten. The script is based on the Pahlavi script which had been in use for many centuries for writing Middle Persian texts. The Pahlavi script in turn is derived from Aramaic, the chief administrative language of the Achaemenid Empire. It contains only consonants and is read from right to left.

One of the holiest Zoroastrian prayers, the Ashem vohū, this manuscript discovered at Dunhuang by Aurel Stein in 1917. 9th century (Or 8212/84, British Library)

There is, however, a unique document from Central Asia, the so-called Sogdian Ashem vohū, which records the Avestan words of one of the Zoroastrian sacred prayers in Sogdian (a medieval Iranian language) script. Dating from the 9th century C.E., this document is the oldest extant Zoroastrian manuscript, predating the Avestan manuscripts by about 300 years. The Ashem vohū prayer occupies the first two lines of the text and shows features of the local pronunciation of Avestan in Sogdian, unaffected by the way Avestan was pronounced in the province of Pars. The rest of the text tells a story of Zarathushtra coming before and paying homage to a ‘supreme god’ (presumably Ahura Mazda) in Paradise.

Originally published by the British Library

Written by Almut Hintze

Almut Hintze is Zartoshty Brothers Professor of Zoroastrianism at SOAS, University of London, and Fellow of the British Academy. She specialises in Zoroastrianism and the tradition of its sacred texts, of which she has published several editions. She currently directs a collaborative project on the Multimedia Yasna, funded by European Research Council (2016–2021), to produce an interactive film of a complete performance of the Yasna ritual, electronic tools for editing Avestan texts, and a text-critical edition, translation, commentary and dictionary of the Avestan Yasna.

The Enlightened One

The Buddha lived and taught in north-east India in the 5th century B.C.E., dying in his eightieth year. The Theravāda tradition puts his death in 486 B.C.E., while the Mahāyāna tradition has it in 368 B.C.E. Recent scholarly research suggests his most likely dates were 484–404 B.C.E.

The term “Buddha” is not a name but a title, meaning “Awakened One” or “Enlightened One.” The person who became “the Buddha” of our age was born as Siddhattha Gotama (in Pāli) or Siddhārtha Gautama (in Sanskrit). He is not seen as unique in being a Buddha, as Buddhas are seen to have arisen in past eons of the world, and will do so in future. They are not incarnations of a God, but humans who have developed ethical and spiritual perfections over many lives.

Illustration of the Suvannasāma Jātaka that tells of a previous incarnation of the Buddha as a devoted son of blind parents, who was killed by an arrow accidentally but brought back to life thanks to his accumulated merit. Mahābuddhagunā (Great Perfections of the Buddha), Thailand, 19th century (British Library)

Mahābuddhagunā (Great Perfections of the Buddha), detail, Thailand, 19th century (British Library)

A Buddha is seen as one who becomes awakened to the true nature of reality, and awakened from ingrained greed, hatred and delusion. They are enlightened in being able to clearly see the nature of the conditioned world, with its many worlds in which beings are reborn, and Nirvana, the timeless state beyond all rebirths. Moreover a Buddha is seen as a wise and compassionate teacher who shows people the path beyond suffering.

Buddhism accepts several kinds of rebirth. The unpleasant ones are as some kind of animal, as frustrated ghosts, or in long-lasting, but not eternal, hells. The more pleasant ones are as humans or various kinds of god (deva). How someone is reborn is seen as a natural result of their intentional actions, or karma.

Bad actions lead to unpleasant rebirths, and good ones to more pleasant rebirths. All beings carry a stock of past karma into their next rebirth. As no rebirth lasts forever, even the gods, who are long-lived, need liberation from the cycle of repeated rebirths, and a Buddha is seen as a guiding teacher of both humans and gods.

Gautama is believed to have attained Buddhahood at the age of thirty-five, and for the remaining forty-five years of his life he taught many disciples how to live ethically and harmoniously in this life, how to attain a good rebirth, and how to go beyond all rebirths.

What do we know about the Buddha’s life?

Scattered passages in early Buddhist texts focus on key events in his life. These were later woven together, embellished and added to in more sustained allegorical biographies in the early centuries C.E., such as the Nidānakathā of the Theravādins and the Mahāvastu, Lalitavistara, Abhiniṣkramaṇa Sūtra, and Buddhacarita of various other early schools.

Map of India c. 500 B.C.E. with the Sakyan republic circled in red (map: Avantiputra7, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Gautama was born in the small Sakyan republic as the son of an elder who was elected as a ruler. He later came to be seen as a “prince,” with his father as a “king.” His father was Suddhodana (Pāli, Sanskrit Śuddhodana), and Mahāmāyā was his mother.

The birth of the Buddha-to-be (Bodhisatta), Burma, 19th century (British Library)

As soon as he was born, Gotama miraculously stood up, strode seven paces and, declaring that this was his last birth, said he was destined for awakening. Just days after, his mother died, so he was brought up by Mahā-pajāpatī Gotamī, his aunt. He had a very comfortable and pleasant upbringing.

However, in his twenties Gotama started to reflect on some of the stark truths of life: that however well off we are, we will age, get sick and die. The later biographies present his awareness of these facts as dramatic discoveries, as part of the story of the “four sights.” They say that due to his father’s constant care and over-protection, Gotama knew no sorrow, pain, or unhappiness, and saw no old age, disease or death. However, one day he went out for a chariot ride, which allowed him to see an aged man for the very first time. On a second occasion, he saw a diseased man for the first time. On a third trip, he saw his first corpse. On a fourth occasion, he saw a calm, wandering religious seeker, a renunciant (Pāli samaṇa, Sanskrit śramaṇa) and made up his mind to follow this lifestyle.

Aged twenty-nine, Gotama left his old life behind, including his wife and newborn child. He removed his royal clothes and ornaments, cut off his hair and put on simple ascetic clothes. This was his “great renunciation.”

Prince Siddhattha cuts his long hair at Anoma River and renounces worldly life. Burma, 19th century. Or 4762, ff. 9–10 (British Library)

In his search for peace, Gotama went in turn to two yogic teachers who taught him how to attain two refined mystical states that went beyond any of the forms of the material world. He soon mastered these, but felt that they did not go far enough as they would lead only to a refined rebirths, not escape from all rebirths.

Prince Siddhattha cuts his long hair at Anoma River and renounces worldly life. Burma, 19th century, detail. Or 4762, ff. 9–10 (British Library)

He next tried mortification of the body and its desires. He did this for six long years, but in time saw that this practice led him nowhere.

At this point, he recollected an incident in his youth: when seated under the shade of a tree his mind had reached a joyful and calm meditative absorption known as the first jhāna (Pāli, Sanskrit dhyāna). This recollection pointed him to a more balanced “middle way.” Too weak to meditate, he started taking solid food again, in the process, however, losing his five companions in asceticism.

Once in a healthier physical state, Gotama sat under a tree on a moonlit night to develop jhāna, probably by practising mindfulness of breathing. At first he had to overcome various hindering states of mind: sensual desire, irritation, dullness and lethargy, excitement and unease, and wavering doubt. These mental states within him were also embodied in a figure known as Māra (‘The Deadly’), a misguided tempter deity, akin to the Christian Satan.

Māra is intent on keeping beings entrapped within Saṃsāra, the cycle of rebirths and re-deaths, and was alarmed at the prospect of Gotama’s escaping this, so attacked him with an army of demons. Gotama was protected by his accumulated good qualities, and the hosts of demons fled in defeat. Māra then invoked his own magic power to try to overthrow Gotama. Gotama touched the earth with his right hand, calling the earth and its goddess to testify to his moral and spiritual perfections. The earth quaked in response and Māra and his hosts withdrew.

Scene depicting Māra’s temptation, Lalitavistara Sūtra (British Library)

Later that night, Gotama attained the first jhāna again, and then three further jhānas till he was in a state of profound equanimity, mindfulness and mental alertness. From this, he then attained to three higher knowledges: 1) He remembered many of his past lives; 2) he acquired the “divine eye,” with which he saw how the nature of beings’ rebirths depended on their karma; 3) he perceived the four “Noble Truths.” These are four true realities of life recognised by spiritually noble people on the Buddhist path: “suffering” (dukkha), in the sense of aspects of life that are painful and unsatisfactory; the origin (samudaya) of dukkha, namely craving; the ending (nirodha) of craving and dukkha (Nirvana); and the path (magga) leading to this. He had thus destroyed the deep-rooted intoxicating inclinations binding him to repeated rebirths, and was a Buddha.

Seeing the profundity of what he had realised, and that ordinary people were unlikely to appreciate this, he was at first hesitant about teaching others. But Sahampati, a compassionate deity, taught by a past Buddha, keenly asked him teach others. He walked many miles to find the five former companions in asceticism, in Varanasi. He taught them about the middle way and the four Noble Truths, and thus “set the wheel of the Dhamma rolling.”

Silvered palm leaf manuscript of Dhamma-cakka-ppavattan-asutta in Pāli. Burma, 19th century (British Library)

Events in his forty-five years of teachings are hard to sequence, but the last three months of his life are dealt within the Mahā-parinibbāna Sutta. He died of a stomach complaint, lying down between two trees blooming out of season, in a state of deep meditative calm and self-control, and with many gods looking on.

The Buddha’s death and passing into parinibbāna at Kusinara. Burma, 19th century. Or 14298, f. 18 (British Library)

How were the Buddha’s teachings collected?

Soon after his death, 500 disciples who were enlightened Arahats, free of further rebirth, gathered to agree what he had taught, and arranged these into two kinds of text that could be communally chanted: Vinaya, on monastic discipline, and the Suttas, or discourses. At that time, writing was little used in India, but there was a well-developed tradition of passing on detailed texts orally. Different group of monks in time had slightly different versions that they passed on, but there is a remarkable overall agreement. The form preserved by the Theravāda school, in Pāli, was written down for the first time around 20 B.C.E. in Sri Lanka, running to over 40 modern volumes.

The Suttas do not focus on the person of the Buddha, but his Dhamma (Pāli, Sanskrit Dharma): his teachings, the realities they point to, especially the nature of the world and the Path to Nirvana, and experiences on the Path, culminating in Nirvana. The Buddha said, though, that “he who sees the Dhamma sees me.”

Do all Buddhists treat Buddha the same?

From around the 1st century B.C.E., a new movement in Buddhism developed, alongside the early schools such as the Theravāda. This “Mahāyāna,” or “Great Vehicle’” tradition came to include a more glorified view of the Buddha.

Eighth chapter of the “Lotus Sūtra,” one of the most influential scriptures of Mahāyāna Buddhism. It is seen by many of its adherents as the summation of the teachings of the Buddha. The frontispiece seen here is from a Japanese manuscript and depicts in the upper section Buddha granting promises of Buddhahood to his assembled disciples; in the lower are scenes from the parable of a man who leads a life of poverty and hardship, unaware that many years ago a friend had sewn a priceless jewel into his robe, an allusion to the teachings of the Buddha (British Library)

Eighth chapter of the ‘Lotus Sūtra’, detail (British Library)

The Lotus Sūtra saw him as having become awakened many eons ago, and to have existed as a heavenly being, generally known as Śākyamuni Buddha. This Buddha was periodically incarnated on earth to compassionately teach the way to Nirvana and also how to become a perfect Buddha like himself. While earlier Buddhism had already talked of countless worlds spread throughout the universe, the Mahāyāna talked of named Buddhas in some of these realms.

In particular, Amitābha (Infinite Light) Buddha was seen to have an ideal “Pure Land,” where conditions for attaining enlightenment were ideal. Its glorious nature is so strong that a person’s individual good karma was not enough to be reborn there. However, Amitābha is said to have vowed to transfer some of his huge stock of good karma to anyone who had sincere faith in him. Hence developed a very devotional strand within Mahāyāna Buddhism, which has been very influential in China and Japan, alongside more meditative traditions such as Zen.

A key Mahāyāna idea, emphasised in Zen, is that of the “Buddha-nature,” the potential for Buddhahood that is within all beings. Some texts see it as a seed that needs cultivating and maturing; others see it as already a pure Buddhahood within, which needs only to be meditatively uncovered and expressed in action.

The Mahāyānists aspire to become perfect Buddhas, like Gotama /Śākyamuni, and criticised the earlier schools for aiming at the lesser goal of becoming an Arahat, a person liberated from greed, hatred and delusion, and future rebirths. Perfect Buddhahood is seen as attained by following the long path of the compassionate Bodhisattvas, or Bodhi-beings who, when near to Buddhahood, become like heavenly saviour beings. Theravādins, though, are happy to aim for the easier, though still demanding goal of becoming Arahats.

From The British Library (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Hinduism is hard to define, for we cannot think in terms of a mainstream faith with a number of neat offshoots. Rather, it is a religion that embraces an enormous diversity of belief and practice, developed over millennia. It may help to form some idea of the distinctive nature of Hinduism by evoking the image of an ancient banyan tree. The banyan has a central trunk, but in time shoots from overhanging branches reach the ground and take root there, growing strongly till those “shoots” eventually look like trunks of the tree in their own right. As such, an ancient banyan can look like a small wood made up of many trunks all linked to each other by a single canopy of leaves and branches.

Painting of a large banyan tree, showing the numerous intertwined aerial roots reaching down to the ground creating an appearance of many trees when in reality it is just one tree; commissioned by Lieutenant-Colonel W.R. Gilbert, a Commandant of the Ramgarh Battalion based in Hazaribag, India, c. 1825, watercolor (British Library)

Hinduism similarly has many centres of life and growth that are nevertheless organically related, some more, some less distantly, to one another. It has many seemingly independent centres, often with distinctive sacred texts, deities, myths, rituals, saintly figures, codes of conduct, festivals and so on, but on closer scrutiny, like a great banyan, these different centres can be seen to link up more or less directly. This also explains how, while other faiths and civilisations have come and gone, Hinduism continues to thrive and put out new shoots and roots, even when old ones have died away. This article explores some of the varied sacred texts of this religion. Hinduism has a large component of oral tradition and visual imagery in its origins and development. Most of the sacred texts mentioned in this article started life in oral form well before being committed to writing, and as such “sacred text” is not only the written word, but also the “heard” word as well as the visual text of image and icon (mūrti, pratimā, arcā).

Where and when did Hinduism begin?

Hinduism developed with a group of tribes who referred to themselves as Aryans. Disputes surround where they originated from; some say they were already present in western India, others that they came from Central Asia, or further west. We do know that they began to assert their presence in the north-west of the Indian subcontinent at about the beginning of the second millennium B.C.E., culturally displacing, but also interacting with, the Indus civilisation that already existed there. The Indus civilisation is so named because it seems to have spread out from urban settlements on the Indus river. The language the Aryans used and expressed their religion in was Sanskrit. “Sanskrit” is the anglicised form of saṃskṛta, which means “refined” or “polished”; in time it became highly developed and rich in expression and became the language of the elite. Ārya means “respectable”; as this was the term the Aryans used to describe themselves, it was meant to assert their cultural and linguistic superiority. They called the Indus river “Sindhu,” and it is from this term that “Hindu” derives. Thus Hinduism signifies the Aryans’ culture and religious traditions as they developed over time, incorporating elements from other cultures encountered along the way.

What is the Veda?

The Aryans called their most sacred text Veda, meaning the “knowledge.” It was believed to have arisen from the infallible “hearing” (śruti), by ancient seers, of the sacred deposit of words whose recitation and contemplation bring stability and wellbeing to both the natural and human worlds. The Veda is believed to have developed over a span of 2000 years in four traditional phases. The first phase started with hymns, chants, incantations and other compositions in an early form of Sanskrit. The hymns in particular were largely directed at transcendent powers, most of whom were called devas and devīs (misleadingly translated as “gods” and “goddesses”). These powers, individually or in groups, were thought to exercise control over the world through cosmic forces. In this early phase of the Veda, there is reference to a One (ekam) that undergirds all being.

Folio from a Rig Veda manuscript, 1495-1735 (British Library)

The second phase of the Vedic text, called the Brāhmaṇas, concerns the sacrificial ritual (yajña) that lay at the heart of Vedic religion. It was by the proper performance and recitation of this ritual that order and stability were thought to be established in the world. The third phase is the Āraṇyakas, “forest-texts,” which represented a meditative departure away from the external performance of the Vedic sacrificial ritual. A tendency had developed among some to internalise the sacrifice within the inner self (ātman), which was eventually perceived as spiritual, and as distinct from the body and other forms of matter. This tendency was taken further in the fourth and final phase of the Vedic corpus, the Upaniṣads. In some passages of the Upaniṣads, the One, mentioned in the first phase of the Veda and now known as Brahman, was identified as a single, supra-personal, indivisible spiritual Self, undergirding all change and difference in our world; in other passages, the One was given a more personal and divine status as īśvara (“God”), distinct from but supporting the existence of individual selves and the rest of finite being. From early times the content of the Veda was divided under four genres of text into the Ṛg Veda, the Yajur Veda, the Sāma Veda and the Atharva Veda, so it is quite common to speak in terms of the “four Vedas.”

The correct performance of Vedic sacrificial ritual was thought to be so important for ordering the relationships between humans and the world in the early stages of Hinduism, that another cluster of texts called the Vedāṅgas emerged. These fell under the heading of “smṛti’,”the not infallible but still authoritative “recall” of received wisdom. The Vedāṅgas were concerned in different ways with the cadence, origin, meaning and proper articulation of Vedic (Sanskrit) terms used for the ritual, the appropriate times for the ritual’s performance, and so on. As Vedāṅgas or “limbs of the Veda” these texts were envisaged as protecting and nurturing the body that was the Veda.

Other smṛti compositions also developed from the beginning of the Common Era in conjunction with the Vedic canon. Important among these were texts that codified a developing and central concept of Hinduism, dharma. This concept deals with the right order between the different strata and birth-groups (varṇa and jāti) of Hindu society (which we lump together under the term “caste”) and its male and female members. It was believed that these texts, through their prescriptions and prohibitions, elaborated on the social implementation of Vedic order.

Following the analogy of the banyan tree, all these different compositions on dharma may be viewed as contributing to the sap coursing through the Hindu banyan, helping bring together its wide-ranging parts under a common but continuously challenged and debated theme.

What is the Mahābhārata?

Two other major contributors in this respect were dharma-texts of a different order, the Mahābhārata (“The Great Tale of the Bhāratas”) and the Rāmāyaṇa (“The Coming of Rāma”). Both compositions were originally compiled in Sanskrit verse over several hundreds of years, beginning from about the middle of the first millennium B.C.E. In eighteen books the Mahābhārata narrates the story of the rivalry between two groups of cousin warriors, the Pāṇḍavas and the Kauravas. With the aid of hundreds of supporting characters and intriguing sub-plots, the story imparts many teachings about the nature of dharma. Embedded in book 6 of the Mahābhārata is perhaps the most famous devotional sacred text of Hinduism, the 700 verse Bhagavad Gītā, or “Song of (Krishna as) God.” The Gītā, as it is often called, mainly contains teachings by Krishna (also spelt Kṛṣṇa), as Supreme Being, to his friend and disciple Arjuna about how to attain union with him in his divine state. The Gītā, though technically smṛti, is usually treated as equivalent to śruti by its followers – hence its importance. The Mahābhārata has been called the “fifth Veda” in many Hindu circles, in the belief that it cumulatively teaches, in a more accessible way, the essential truths of the Veda.

Lord Krishna, miniature from a Bhagavad Gītā manuscript, 18th century (British Library)

What is the Rāmāyaṇa?

The Rāmāyaṇa consists of seven books and recounts the adventures of the exiled king Rāma and his various companions as they make their way to the island-kingdom of Laṅkā – off the southern tip of India – to rescue Rāma’s wife Sītā, who had been abducted by Rāvaṇa, the ten-headed ogre-king of Laṅkā. For a great many Hindus, the Rāmāyaṇa, and devotion to the avatar (the chief representation of the Supreme Being in human form) Rāma offers an accessible path to salvation. Thus, the Rāmāyaṇa also becomes an alternative source of Vedic instruction.

Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa on mount Prasravaṇa, from the Mewar Rāmāyaṇa, 1649–1652 (British Library)

Like the proliferating banyan, both epics have developed in different Indian vernaculars, with multiple versions of their storylines scattered about the cultural landscape of Hinduism. Under this rubric falls Tulsidas’ Rāmcaritmānas, which was composed in verse in 16th century in an early dialect of Hindi, and which has become the re-telling of the Rāma story for a large proportion of north Indians. Through the multiple re-tellings of the epics Hindus can access the characters and teachings via different historical and linguistic pathways. Hindus, in general, have not been minded to seek out “definitive” versions of post-Vedic sacred texts. In fact, the interpretation of sacred texts in Hinduism, whether these have been categorised as śruti or smṛti, has always been a matter for earnest discussion and debate for Hindu thinkers down the ages.

What are the Purāṇas?

We must also mention two other types of sacred text which act as radiating supports for multiple centres of the Hindu banyan: the Purāṇas (“Books of received wisdom”) and the Āgamas (“Compilations of additional instructions and teachings”). The Purāṇas comprise an oral and transcribed repository of myth, folklore and other kinds of teaching and information collated and distributed from the early centuries of the Common Era onwards. Their authorised number is hard to determine, but some have been more important than others in the history of Hinduism, e.g. the Viṣṇu and Bhāgavata Purāṇas (c. 5th and 9th centuries respectively) which have been very important in formulating Vaiṣṇava theologies, the Liṅga Purāṇa (c. 7th to 11th centuries), important for worship of Shiva (also spelt Śiva) as Supreme Deity, and the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa (ca. 5th century) which has performed the same function for worship of the Supreme Goddess.

Upper folio left: the god Brahmā asking Devī to wake the reclining Vishnu from his slumber so that he may kill the demons Madhu and Kaitabha. Upper folio right: King Suratha after being deposed retires to the forest where he becomes a fervent devotee of the Goddess. Lower folio left: the Goddess. Lower folio right, the patron and his family, from the Devi Mahatmya, 16th century (British Library)

What are the Āgamas?

The Āgamas can be seen to represent those Hindu sacred texts that developed in non-Vedic contexts, but this does not mean that they are perceived as necessarily anti-Vedic in content. Thus, in the Tamil Śaiva Siddhānta tradition of south India, besides the Veda (which is deferred to as only part of this tradition’s scriptural canon), the twenty-eight Śaiva Āgamas (composed in Sanskrit and Tamil), and two other categories of sacred text (the twelve Tirumurai and the fourteen Meykaṇṭa Śāstras), are also regarded as giving authoritative teaching for attaining final salvation through the knowledge and worship of Shiva as the Supreme Godhead. Similarly, the Vaiṣṇavas, who hold Vishnu (also spelt Viṣṇu) to be in one form or other the Supreme Deity, also have their Āgamas that teach the path to final union with Vishnu. In these traditions, the non-Vedic texts are interpreted as being ‘Veda-congruent’, that is, as implicitly refining and completing the Veda towards a fullness of teaching that leads to final liberation from the travails of human existence.

This essay originally appeared in Discovering Sacred Texts at the British Library (CC BY 4.0)

Essay by Mei Mei Chan

The Southern Colossal Buddha Maitreya, Mogao Cave 96, 618–705 C.E., High to Late Tang dynasty, China (image courtesy of the Dunhuang Academy)

Buddhism teaches that all the things surrounding us in life are impermanent. Love, money, happiness, pain, and even life itself are transient. According to some Buddhist schools of thought, even Buddhism itself is transient. Its current teachings will one day be forgotten, to be replaced by a new Buddhism.

The Buddha Maitreya is the Buddha of the Future. Technically, the Maitreya is not yet a buddha, but is currently a bodhisattva who resides and waits in the Tuṣita Heaven. The Tuṣita Heaven is one of the realms in Buddhist cosmology known for being a place where deities and bodhisattvas are born before they each enter their last human life cycle and achieve final enlightenment as buddhas.

Stele with Maitreya (in the “pensive” posture), 5th century, stone with traces of pigment Northern Wei Dynasty, China, 84.5 cm high (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

At any moment

A Chinese portrayal of the Bodhisattva Maitreya depicts him sitting in a posture with one leg draped over the other. This is known as the “pensive” posture.” Although many pensive bodhisattvas are commonly identified as Maitreya, this can be a hot topic of debate, depending on the image involved. If the bodhisattva represented is just a generic bodhisattva, then the descent to earth would be to aid the faithful who call on the bodhisattva for assistance. If the bodhisattva represented is Maitreya, the pose can indicate his imminent return to earth to establish a new age in Buddhism, or kalpa.

Kano Takanobu, Hotei, hanging scroll, 1616, Edo period, ink and color on paper,  Japan, 69.9 x 38.1 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The Laughing Buddha

Another popular representation of the Maitreya can be found in the images of the Laughing Buddha, or Budai (布袋, “cloth sack”), such as in a painting by Kano Takanobu. Also known as Hotei in Japanese, the round, good-humored monk is often identified as the Future Buddha. Hotei was probably a real historical figure who hailed from Zhejiang province in China.

A popular depiction of this incarnation of Maitreya is found in the final verse of the Ten Ox-Herding Verses. A young boy searches for his lost ox as a metaphor for seeking enlightenment. In the tenth and final verse, the young boy has found the ox and has returned home, and a portly stranger is suddenly introduced as the new central figure of the verse. Some readings interpret this older figure as the boy from the beginning of the poem:

He enters the city barefoot, with chest exposed;
Covered in dust and ashes, smiling broadly.
No need for the magic powers of the gods and immortals,
Just let the dead tree bloom again.Trans. Gen Sakamoto

Sanbo Zen Buddhist practitioner Kubota Jiun explains the depiction of Hotei as a laughing buddha in the visual representations of the tenth verse:

All pictures representing the tenth of the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures show a fellow named Hotei [ ?–917, Zen monk in old China]. He is said to have had a big belly. His gut is big and his chest bare. He has a big bag and a staff. And perhaps he has been walking barefooted. The attitude of the dear old Hotei, who is said to be a manifestation of Bodhisattva Maitreya, was presumably as that depicted by this verse. Kubota [Akira] Ji’un (1932–today), translated by J. Cusumano & Satō M.

The final line in the ox-herding verse may also allude to how billions of years in the future, Maitreya will usher in the rebirth of a new Buddhism following the complete passing of its current form.“Let the dead tree bloom again.” What was once old will become new again.

Wu Zeitan and Maitreya

A 17th-century Chinese depiction of Wu, from Empress Wu of the Zhou, 1690 (image in the public domain)

Beyond solely communicating Buddhist ideas, some artworks showing the Bodhisattva Maitreya had political overtones. For example, in the Tang Dynasty, Empress Wu Zetian (624–705 C.E.) used the narrative of the Bodhisattva Maitreya to further her political agenda. Empress Wu faced harsh criticisms as a female emperor, and many arguments against her were grounded in supernatural and spiritual reasons. When earthquakes or natural anomalies occurred, the court would seize the opportunity to declare that heaven and the earth were displeased by Empress Wu’s feminine energy. At the height of her power, Empress Wu declared herself the female incarnation of the Buddha Maitreya to assert her sovereignty. She called herself Emperor Shengshen (圣神), which translates to “Holy Spirit,” or “God.”

Statue of Vairocana Buddha, originally located in the grottoes of Longmen, carved in the likeness of Empress Wu Zetian during her reign (photo: Harlock81)

During Empress Wu’s reign, she commissioned large-scale Buddhist art such as statues of the Buddha carved in her own likeness. One such statue is the famous colossal Vairocana Buddha at the Longmen Grottoes in Luoyang, China. The Vairocana Buddha represents the “first buddha,” or the buddha from whom all other buddhas originate. The face of the Vairocana Buddha at the Longmen Grottoes in Luoyang was modeled on the features of Wu Zetian.

Original essay on the Dunhuang Foundation blog.

Essay by Mei Mei Chan

The introduction and development of Guanyin as a deity in China is a fascinating example of cultural interaction. The way in which the Bodhisattva was adopted, localized, and adapted for the spiritual needs of Chinese devotees indicates the important role played by the Silk Roads in the exchange of ideas.

Guanyin of the Universal Gateway in Mogao Cave 45, 705–781 C.E., Late Tang Dynasty, Dunhuang (image courtesy of the Dunhuang Academy)

There is no place where he will not manifest himself.
The suffering of those in the troubled states of being:
Hell-dwellers, hungry ghosts, and animals;
And the suffering of birth, old age, illness, and death
Will gradually be extinguished.The Lotus Sutra, trans. Tsugunari Kubo and Akira Yuyama, Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai 2007, p. 301.

It is generally agreed among Chinese Buddhists and scholars of Buddhist studies that the Chinese figure Guanyin is the same as the figure known in India as Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara. Buddhism began in India and spread to China over the trade routes known as the Silk Roads.

Avalokitesvara is the bodhisattva who represents compassion. The Lotus Sutra, one of the most important texts in Mahayana Buddhism, describes Avalokitesvara extensively in Chapter 25. Avalokitesvara is also an interlocutor in the Heart Sutra, the short but influential sutra on the perfection of wisdom.

Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara in Water Moon Form (Shuiyue Guanyin), 11th century (Liao dynasty), willow and pigment (multiple-woodblock construction), 118.1 x 95.3 x 71.1 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

Guanyin in Chinese means “Perceiver of all Sounds,” which refers to the way in which Guanyin is able to hear all prayers and cries for help. In India, bodhisattvas are genderless or are referred to as male. The Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, or Guanyin, is often depicted as female in China. One reason for this gender fluidity is due to the way the Bodhisattva has the ability to manifest on earth in many different forms.

The Bodhisattva Padmapani Lokesvara,11th century, copper alloy with gilding and semiprecious stones, Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, 58.4 cm high (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

One of Avalokitesvara’s many forms is Padmapani Lokesvara, which means “Lord with a Lotus in his Hand.”

Detail of the some of the forms Guanyin takes when s/he manifests on Earth, from the Guanyin of the Universal Gateway Mural in Mogao Cave 45, 705–781 C.E., Late Tang Dynasty, Dunhuang, China (image courtesy of the Dunhuang Academy)

The Guanyin mural in Mogao Cave 45 at Dunhuang shows some of the forms Guanyin takes when s/he manifests on Earth. The mural depicts Chapter 25 of the Lotus Sutra, which describes the way in which Avalokitesvara appears to all who need help, in whatever form. A detail represents several different scenes in which a human being is in a supplicatory posture facing another figure. That other figure is Avalokitesvara, manifesting on earth as either male or female, deity or human.

Buddhist deity Guanyin (Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara), 16th century, Ming Dynasty, ivory, China, 24.8 cm high (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Another reason for the tendency towards a feminine representation of Avalokitesvara in China has to do with the fact that the Chinese often prayed to Guanyin for children, especially sons. This sometimes worked, and statues of Guanyin in certain temples would become known for their ability to bestow sons—such as an ivory statue at The Metropolitan Museum of Art that represents Guanyin as the “Bestower of Sons.”

Left: Guanyin Bestowing a Son; right: detail. Hanging scroll, late 16th century, Ming Dynasty, ink, color, and gold on silk, China, 120.7 x 60.3 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

A Ming dynasty hanging scroll shows another depiction of Guanyin bestowing a son, while seated on a lion. Besides Guanyin, another important figure featured in this lavish Ming painting is Sudhana, the young boy at the feet of the majestic lion. In the Gandavyuha Sutra, Sudhana is the protagonist who journeys to Mount Potalaka to seek advice on enlightenment from Avalokitesvara. The sutra describes the mythical home of Avalokitesvara as an isolated mountain rising out of the seas.

The precise location of the mountain is the subject of considerable speculation. According to Xuanzhang, it is located in southern India to the east of the Malaya Mountains. He describes it as a perilous mountain with a lake and a heavenly stone palace at the summit. A river flows from the summit, encircling the mountain twenty times before flowing into the South Sea. Those who seek to meet the bodhisattva scale the mountain, but few succeed. The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism. Edited by Donald S. Lopez Jr. and Robert E. Buswell Jr.

The Chinese interpretation of Potalaka is Mount Putuo, which Chinese Buddhists believe to be in Zhejiang Province.

White-Robed Guanyin, hanging scroll, late 14th century, Ming Dynasty, ink on paper, China, 91.4 x 32.7 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Essay by Mei Mei Chan

Kneeling Attendant Bodhisattva, late 7th century (Tang dynasty), unfired clay mixed with fibers and straw modeled over wooden armature; with polychromy and gilding, from Mogao Cave 328, Dunhuang, China, Gansu province, 122 cm high (Harvard Art Museums)

What is a bodhisattva?

In Sanskrit, bodhisattva roughly means: “being who intends to become a buddha.”

In the Theravada tradition of Buddhism, the Buddha referred to himself as bodhisattva during all of his incarnations and lifetimes before he achieved enlightenment. It was only after he achieved buddhahood that it became proper to refer to him as the Buddha.

In the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism, a bodhisattva is any being who intends to achieve enlightenment and buddhahood.

[…] Western literature often describes the bodhisattva as someone who postpones his enlightenment in order to save all beings from suffering […] by choosing this longer course, he perfects himself over many lifetimes in order to achieve the superior enlightenment of a buddha at a point in the far-distant future […]The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, edited by Robert E. Buswell and Donald S. Lopez, p. 134.

In Buddhist artistic traditions, there are many archetypal bodhisattva figures who appear repeatedly. In this essay we will look at five of them.

These specific bodhisattva figures may be depicted as either male or female, depending on the geographic context and the iconographic traditions of that culture.

Padmapani and Vajrapani in Ajanta Cave 1, 450–500 C.E, Maharashta, India

Paintings of two archetypal bodhisattva figures are found in the Ajanta Caves in Maharashta, India. These figures flank a statue of the Buddha. The one on the left is named Padmapani, and the one to the right is named Vajrapani.

Enthroned Buddha Attended by the Bodhisattvas Padmapani (Avalokiteshvara) and Vajrapani, second half of the 10th century, Early Eastern Javanese period, bronze, Indonesia, 29.2 cm high (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Another artwork from Indonesia features the same theme. The Buddha sits in the center flanked by the two bodhisattvas: Padmapani on the left and Vajrapani on the right.

Avalokitesvara

Padmapani is another name in Sanskrit for Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, who represents the compassion of all of the Buddhas.

Guanyin, also known as the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, or “The Perceiver of Sounds,” Mogao Cave 57 at Dunhuang, China (photo: Dunhuang Academy)

In China, the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara goes by the name Guanyin. Chinese art often depicts Avalokitesvara as female.

Vajrapani

The Bodhisattva Vajrapani represents the power of all the Buddhas, and he protects the Buddha. Below he is depicted wielding a lightning-bolt scepter in his left hand.

Vajrapani, late 6th–7th century, Kashmir (India), Gray chorite, 22.9 cm high (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Thanks to cultural contact between the Kushan Empire and what is today northern India, the Bodhisattva Vajrapani has a strong iconographical relationship with the Greek mythological figure of Hercules as found in Gandharan art.

Manjusri and Samantabhadra

Besides the bodhisattvas Padmapani and Vajrapani, another pair of popular archetypal bodhisattvas are Manjusri and Samantabhadra.

Shakyamuni Triad, hanging scroll, 1565, Joseon Dynasty, color and gold on silk, Korea, 60.5 x 32 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

In a Joseon dynasty painting, the Buddha sits in the center with Bodhisattva Manjusri and Bodhisattva Samantabhadra at his side. This is called the Shakyamuni Trinity or Triad.

Manjusri

Manjusri is often depicted with a lion, as seen in a peaceful painting by Japanese artist Shūsei.

Shūsei, Monju (Manjusri) on a Lion, hanging scroll, late 15th century, Muromachi period, ink on paper, Japan, 81.5 × 33 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The Bodhisattva Manjusri represents the wisdom of all the Buddhas. Sometimes he is depicted holding a sword or a scepter. In China, Manjusri is known as Wenshu, and in Japan he is known as Monju.

Samantabhadra

Samantabhadra is the bodhisattva often depicted with Manjusri. The name Samantabhadra means “Universal Worthy” in Sanskrit. Samantabhadra is associated with meditation.

Bodhisattva Samantabhadra (Puxian), 12th–14th century, Southern Song to Yuan dynasty, mammoth ivory, China, 22.2 cm high (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

As seen in a mammoth ivory sculpture, this bodhisattva is often depicted sitting on an elephant. Much like Avalokitesvara, this bodhisattva is often depicted in a female form in China.

Maitreya

Another archetypal bodhisattva figure is the Maitreya.

Maitreya, after 599, marble and pigment, China, 17.8 cm high (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The Bodhisattva Maitreya, or Buddha Maitreya, is the future Buddha who will succeed the Buddha Gautama, the Buddha of the present age.

Originally published on the Dunhuang Foundation blog.

The Byzantine Empire under the Emperor Justinian, c. 550 C.E.

The Byzantine Empire spanned more than a millennium and penetrated geographic regions far from the capital of Constantinople. As a result, Byzantine art includes works created from the fourth century to the fifteenth century and from such diverse regions as Greece, the Italian peninsula, the eastern edge of the Slavic world, the Middle East, and North Africa. So what is Byzantine art and what do we mean when we use this term?

Events from the lives of Jesus Christ and his mother, the Virgin Mary, were among the most frequently depicted subjects in Byzantine art. Many of these events were recorded in the four Gospels in the Christian Bible, but others were also inspired by non-biblical texts, such as the “Protoevangelion of James,” which were nevertheless read by the Byzantines. The Byzantines commemorated these events as church feasts according to the liturgical calendar each year (as does the Eastern Orthodox Church today, which is heir to Byzantium’s religious tradition).

Depictions of these events appeared in a wide range of media, on different scales, and in public and private settings. It would be inaccurate to imply that these scenes were always the same; they varied depending on the circumstances of their production as well as the periods in which they were made. Acknowledging the risk of oversimplifying an artistic tradition that endured for more than a millennium, this essay nevertheless seeks to introduce the stories and common features in Byzantine depictions of the lives of Christ and the Virgin.

Commonly depicted subjects in Byzantine art

Birth of the Virgin fresco, c. 1314, King’s Church, Studenica Monastery, Serbia (photo: Blago, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)

The Birth of the Virgin

Drawn from non-biblical accounts such as the “Protoevangelion of James,” the Birth of the Virgin is commemorated as a Church feast on September 8. Anna, the Virgin’s mother, lies on a bed. Midwives bathe the newborn Mary. Other women bustle about, attending to Anna. Joachim, the Virgin’s father, sometimes appears as well. At Studenica Monastery in Serbia, Joachim stands beside the Virgin as she lies in a cradle after her bath in the lower right. (view annotated image)

Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, c. 1315–1321, Chora Monastery, Constantinople (Istanbul), mosaic (photo: Byzantologist, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple

The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple is based on non-biblical texts and is commemorated on November 21. The Virgin Mary is a child. She processes with her parents, Joachim and Anna, along with several candle-bearing maidens, toward the Jewish temple. Joachim and Anna offer the Virgin to God and the priest Zacharias receives her into the temple. As the narrative continues, Mary dwells within the temple, where an angel feeds her bread. The earliest examples of this image date to the tenth century. The hymnography for the feast emphasizes that the Virgin herself became a temple by allowing God to dwell in her when she conceived Christ. At the Chora Monastery, the procession to the temple takes a circular form to accommodate the vault where it appears. (view annotated image)

Annunciation mosaic, Daphni monastery, Chaidari, c. 1050–1150 (photo: Mark L. Darby, all rights reserved)

The Annunciation

The Annunciation (Greek: Evangelismos) is recorded in Luke 1:26–38 and commemorated on March 25. Simple compositions, such as the mosaic found at Daphni, show the archangel Gabriel approaching the Virgin Mary to announce that the Holy Spirit will come upon her and that she will conceive the Son of God, Jesus. Other images show the Spirit descending as a dove on a ray of light. Artists sometimes include additional details from a non-biblical text known as the “Protoevangelion of James.” The Virgin may hold scarlet thread to weave a veil for the temple or appear near a well where she is drawing water when the angel approaches.

Nativity of Christ miniature in the Menologion of Basil II, c. 1000 (The Vatican Library, photo: Wikimedia Commons)

The Nativity of Christ

The Nativity of Christ depicts the birth of Jesus. It is drawn primarily from Matthew 1:18–2:12 and Luke 2:1–20 and is commemorated on December 25. The newborn Christ appears in a manger (a feeding trough for animals) near an ox and ass. The Virgin sits or reclines near Christ, but Joseph is usually relegated to the periphery (appearing in the lower left corner in the miniature from the Menologion of Basil II) to minimize his role in the Christ’s birth (emphasizing Mary’s virginity). The narrative continues with one or two midwives bathing Christ. Angels announce the good news to shepherds. The star that guided the Magi from the east shines down on the Christ child. (view annotated image)

The Presentation in the Temple, 15th century, Byzantium, tempera on wood, gold ground, 44.5 x 42.2 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The Meeting of the Lord in the Temple

The Meeting of the Lord in the Temple (Greek: Hypapantē) is described in Luke 2:22–38 and commemorated on February 2. Mary and Joseph enter the Jewish temple to sacrifice two birds and offer Jesus to the Lord, in accordance with the Jewish law. They encounter the prophet Simeon (shown taking the Christ child in his arms in this image from The Metropolitan Museum of Art) and the prophetess Anna, who identify Christ as the Messiah. The temple is often visualized as a Christian church, indicated by a Christian altar and other church furniture. (view annotated image)

Baptism of Christ, 11th century, mosaic, Hosios Loukas Monastery, Boeotia (photo: Byzantologist, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The Baptism of Christ

The Baptism of Christ (sometimes called “Theophany” or “Epiphany”) is recounted in Matthew 3:13–17, Mark 1:9–11, and Luke 3:21–22, and is commemorated by the Eastern Orthodox Church on January 6. John the Baptist, or “Forerunner,” baptizes Christ in the Jordan River, while attending angels stand nearby. The Holy Spirit descends on Christ in the form of a dove, while the words of God the Father identifying Jesus as his Son are represented by a hand blessing from the heavens. An ax appears with a tree, referencing the Baptist’s ominous words, “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matthew 3:10). Sometimes, as at Hosios Loukas Monastery, the Jordan River is personified as a human figure in the water, corresponding with its personification in the hymnography for the feast. A cross also appears in the water at Hosios Loukas as a reference to the cross and column at the pilgrimage site associated with this event in Palestine, as described by a sixth-century pilgrim named Theodosius. (view annotated image)

Icon of the Transfiguration, beginning of the 13th century, Constantinople, mosaic, 52 x 36 cm (Musée du Louvre, photo: Byzantologist, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The Transfiguration

The Transfiguration is described in Matthew 17:1–13, Mark 9:2–8, and Luke 9:28–36 and is commemorated on August 6. Jesus ascends a mountain (which tradition identifies as Mount Tabor) with Peter, James, and John (three of his disciples) and is transformed so that he shines with divine light. This light often appears as rays and a mandorla (an almond- or circle-shaped halo of light), as seen in the mosaic icon at the Louvre. Moses and Elijah—two figures representing the law and the prophets from the Hebrew Bible—appear on either side of Christ. Early examples of this motif are found at the Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai and Sant’Apollinare in Classe. (view annotated image)

The Passion

The Passion (“suffering”) refers to Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross and the period leading up to it. It is commemorated annually during Holy Week, whose dates vary from year to year based on the lunar cycle.

The Raising of Lazarus, fragment of a templon beam, 12th century, Mount Athos, tempera on wood, 21.5 x 24 cm (Byzantine and Christian Museum, Athens)

The Raising of Lazarus

The Raising of Lazarus (a friend of Christ’s) from the dead is recorded in John 11:38–44. The Eastern Orthodox Church commemorated this miracle of Christ on the Saturday before Palm Sunday. Christ, trailed by the Apostles, calls forth the shrouded Lazarus from the tomb, as seen in the templon beam fragment in Athens. Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus, kneel at Christ’s feet. Additional figures open the tomb and free Lazarus from his grave clothes. One bystander usually holds his nose because of the stink of Lazarus’s decomposing body. (view annotated image)

Center Panel of a Triptych Icon with the Entry into Jerusalem, 10th century, Constantinople, ivory, 18.4 x 14.7 cm (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, photo: Andreas Praefcke, CC0)

The Entry into Jerusalem

The Entry into Jerusalem is recounted in Matthew 21:1–11, Mark 11:1–10, Luke 19:29–40, and John 12:12–19 and is commemorated on Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Pascha (Easter). Jesus rides into the city of Jerusalem on a donkey. A crowd hails him, throwing cloaks and palms on the road before him. Children often climb among the palm trees, as in the Berlin ivory. (view annotated image)

Last Supper, 1105/6, Panagia Phorbiotissa, Asinou, Cyprus (photo: Byzantologist, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The Last Supper

The Last Supper, “Mystical Supper,” or just “Supper” (Greek: Deipnos), represents the Passover meal that Christ shared with his disciplines before his crucifixion, which is recorded in Matthew 26:20–29, Mark 14:17–25, Luke 22: 14–23, and I Corinthians 11:23–26, and is commemorated on Holy Thursday (known as “Maundy Thursday” in the Latin church). Judas reaches to dip his food in a bowl, which Christ identifies as a sign of betrayal. The table frequently takes the form of a late-antique, C-shaped “sigma” table as at the church of the Panagia Phorbiotissa in Asinou, Cyprus. Often, a large fish appears on the table, which may illustrate the ancient Christian use of the Greek word for “fish” (ichthys) as an acronym for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.” The Last Supper is typically interpreted as the first celebration of the Eucharist. (view annotated image)

Foot washing mosaic, 11th century, mosaic, Hosios Loukas Monastery, Boeotia (photo: Byzantologist, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The Washing of the Feet

The Washing of the Feet occurred during the Last Supper, according to John 13:2–15. In the Gospel account, Peter resists letting Jesus wash his feet. But Christ explains: “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example” (John 13:14–15). The mosaic at Hosios Loukas Monastery shows Christ in the act of washing Peter’s feet. (view annotated image)

Crucifixion from templon beam with twelve feast scenes, 12th century, Cyprus or Sinai, tempera and gold over fine textile ground on panel, 44.1 x 118.3 x 3.1 cm (The Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine, Sinai, Egypt)

The Crucifixion

The Crucifixion depicts Christ’s death on the cross, described Matthew 27:32-56, Mark 15:21-41, Luke 23:26-49, John 19:16-37, and commemorated on Holy Friday (known as “Good Friday” in the west) during Holy Week. Simpler representations of the scene include the Virgin and John the Evangelist, illustrating John’s account. The sun and moon or angels appear in the sky above. More complex compositions, such as that found on a templon beam at Sinai, incorporate other women who followed Christ as well as Roman soldiers, such as Saint Longinus who converted to Christianity. John recounts how one of the soldiers pierced Christ with a spear, spilling blood and water from his side (John 19:34-35). The event unfolds at Golgotha, the “Place of the Skull,” outside of the city walls of Jerusalem (which sometimes appear in the background). Some depictions of this scene include a skull at the foot of the cross, which tradition identifies as the skull of Adam (the first man), reflecting the Christian belief that Christ is the “New Adam” as savior of humankind. (view annotated image)

Deposition fresco, 1164, Saint Panteleimon, Gorno Nerezi, North Macedonia (photo: Byzantologist, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The Deposition from the Cross

The Deposition from the Cross depicts Christ’s body being removed from the cross after his crucifixion. As at the church of Saint Panteleimon at Nerezi, the composition often includes the Virgin and John the Evangelist (who were present at Christ’s crucifixion), as well as Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, two followers of Jesus. It is based on Gospel accounts that describe Joseph of Arimathea burying Christ’s body in Joseph’s own tomb (Matthew 27:57-61, Mark 15:42-47, Luke 23:50-56, John 19:38-42). (view annotated image)

Threnos fresco, 1164, Saint Panteleimon, Gorno Nerezi, North Macedonia (photo: Byzantologist, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The Lamentation

The Lamentation, or Threnos, depicts Christ’s mother and other followers mourning over Christ’s dead body following the crucifixion. As at the church of Saint Panteleimon at Nerezi, the Lamentation often includes John the Evangelist (who was present at the Crucifixion), as well as Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, two followers of Jesus who helped remove his body from the cross and bury him. (view annotated image)

Myrrhbearing women at the empty tomb, 6th century, mosaic, Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna (photo: Byzantologist, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The Resurrection

The Resurrection of Christ from the dead occurred on the third day after his crucifixion according to New Testament accounts, and is celebrated each year on Pascha (Easter). The Gospels describe women who followed Jesus as the first witnesses to Christ’s resurrection: Matthew 28:1–10; Mark 16:1–8; Luke 23:55–24:12; John 20:1–18. Early Christian art depicts the myrrhbearing women bringing spices to anoint Christ’s body but discovering that the tomb is empty. An angel tells them that Christ has risen from the dead. At Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, the empty tomb is envisioned as a rotunda, likely a reference to the Roman emperor Constantine’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre that marked the site of Christ’s resurrection in Jerusalem.

Anastasis fresco, c. 1315–1321, Chora Monastery, Constantinople (Istanbul) (photo: Byzantologist, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The Anastasis

The Anastasis (Greek for “resurrection”), also known as the “Harrowing of Hades” or “Harrowing of Hell,” became a standard resurrection composition from the eighth century onward. Based largely on non-biblical sources, the scene shows Christ descending into Hades (the underworld)—sometimes carrying his cross as an instrument of salvation—to raise the dead from their tombs. Locks and hinges lie broken underfoot as Christ tramples the broken gates of the underworld that once imprisoned the dead. In some images, Christ also tramples the personified figure of Hades, who represents death. At the Chora Monastery, Christ reaches with both hands to raise Adam and Eve (the first humans) from their tombs. Righteous figures from the Hebrew Bible and Christian New Testament—usually David, Solomon, and John the Baptist—stand nearby. The image corresponded with the chief hymn of Pascha (Easter): “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!” (view annotated image)

The Incredulity of Thomas, 11th century, mosaic, Hosios Loukas Monastery, Boeotia (photo: Byzantologist, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The Incredulity of Thomas

The Incredulity of Thomas appears in John 20:24–29, and is commemorated in the Eastern Orthodox Church the Sunday after Pascha (Easter). When some of the disciples claim to have encountered the risen Christ, the Apostle Thomas expresses doubt, stating: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe” (John 20:25). A week later, Jesus appears and invites Thomas to touch his wounds: the moment depicted in this mosaic at Hosios Loukas Monastery. Thomas exclaims: “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28). (view annotated image)

Ascension miniature, late 13th century, Nicaea or Nicomedia (modern Turkey), tempera and gold leaf (The J. Paul Getty Museum)

The Ascension

The Ascension of Christ into heaven, following his resurrection from the dead, is described in Luke 24:50–53 and Acts 1:9–12 and is commemorated on the Thursday that falls forty days after Pascha (Easter). The iconography derives from pre-Christian imperial apotheosis scenes (for example, on the Arch of Titus in Rome). Christ appears within a mandorla and is borne heavenward by angels, as seen in the miniature from the Getty Museum. The Virgin and Apostles stand on earth below. The ascension often appeared in church vaults, corresponding with the Byzantine interpretation of the church as a microcosm with the vaults representing the heavens. (view annotated image)

Pentecost miniature, late 13th century, Nicaea or Nicomedia (modern Turkey), tempera and gold leaf (The J. Paul Getty Museum)

Pentecost

Pentecost (literally “the fiftieth day”) depicts the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles as described in Acts 2 and is commemorated fifty days after Pascha (Easter). The Holy Spirit takes the form of tongues of fire. Sometimes the Virgin appears with the Apostles, although she is not present in the biblical account. In Acts, the Holy Spirit inspires the Apostles to preach the crucified and risen Christ in different languages so that all can understand. In artistic representations of the event, figures representing different “tribes” and “tongues,” or a single figure personifying the entire “cosmos,” (seen in this miniature from the Getty) receive the Apostles’ words. Sometimes, the “prepared throne” (Hetoimasia) is included as the source from which the flames descend. (view annotated image)

Icon with the Koimesis, late 10th century, probably made in Constantinople, ivory, 18.6 x 14.8 x 1.1 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The Dormition

The Dormition (Greek: Koimēsis, literally “falling asleep”) represents the death of the Virgin Mary, described in non-biblical texts and commemorated on August 15. The Virgin lies on her funeral bier surrounded by the Apostles. Christ stands behind the Virgin, receiving her soul, which takes the form of a swaddled infant. Later icons sometimes include additional details such as the Apostles miraculously borne to the scene on clouds and the gates of heaven opening to receive the Virgin. Tenth-century ivories from Constantinople like this one are among the earliest depictions of the Dormition. (view annotated image)

Eleanor Nesbitt explores Sikh gurdwaras, touching on the most notable ones, such as the Golden Temple, their common features and the principles of worship within them.

Historic gurdwaras

Most of the Sikh historic gurdwaras are in north India though some are in Pakistan. (In the Gurus’ time, and until 1947, the Punjab region was not bisected by a national frontier, as Pakistan had not been created.) The architecture of major historic gurdwaras, involving fluted cupolas (gumbads), is influenced by Mughal style. Famous gurdwaras in Pakistan commemorate Guru Nanak’s life: in Nankana Sahib a gurdwara marks the place where he was born and at Kartarpur Sahib a gurdwara stands where he founded a settlement and (in 1539) passed away. Equally well-known is Panja Sahib gurdwara in Hasan Abdal (about 40 kilometres north-west of Islamabad), where a rock bears what is believed to be the imprint of Guru Nanak’s hand.

The title ‘sahib’ in the names of cities (e.g. Anandpur Sahib) and major gurdwaras expresses Sikhs’ reverence for locations associated with their Gurus’ lives.

The takhts

Five notable gurdwaras in India are known as takhts: takht means throne or seat of authority.

The Akal Takht (‘throne of the Timeless One’) is in Amritsar (Punjab), facing the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple), and it is the highest seat of authority. The Akal Takht was first established by Guru Hargobind and the two nishan sahibs (pennants flying from flagpoles, honoured and clad in orange cloth) are a reminder of his two swords that signified the principle of miri piri (a balance of worldly and spiritual authority).

A 19th century photograph of the Great Square and the Akal Takht (‘Throne of the Timeless One’). Established by the sixth Guru Hargobind in the early 19th century, the Akal Takht is also known as Takht Sri Akal Bunga and represents Sikhism’s highest seat of temporal authority. The Great Square, Amritsar, c. 1880s, albumen photographic print (The British Library)

Kesgarh Sahib (in Anandpur Sahib, Punjab) marks the place where Guru Gobind Singh initiated the Khalsa in 1699, according to Sikh tradition. Damdama Sahib (in Bathinda district, Punjab) stands where, in 1705, Guru Gobind Singh compiled the complete Guru Granth Sahib, adding the compositions of his father, Guru Teg Bahadar, to the earlier content. Patna Sahib, further west in the state of Bihar, is the site of Guru Gobind Singh’s birth, while Hazoor Sahib, further south, in Nanded (in Maharashtra state) is where Guru Gobind Singh spent the final days of his life in 1708. The gurdwara’s full name is Takht Sachkhand Sri Hazur Abchalnagar Sahib.

Many smaller, less well-known historic gurdwaras were established in other locations that the Gurus visited, and they mark, for example, the place where the Guru’s horse was tethered or where a miracle allegedly occurred.

Harmandir Sahib

The city of Amritsar is famous for Harmandir Sahib (also called Darbar Sahib), the gurdwara that has been popularly known as the Golden Temple ever since the early 19th century when Punjab’s ruler, the maharaja Ranjit Singh, had the exterior of the upper storeys gilded. Two hundred years earlier Guru Arjan Dev had established the original building on this site, in the centre of a pool of holy water (the amrit sar) which gave its name to the city that grew up around it. According to tradition, the healing properties of this water were originally discovered when a woman’s crippled husband was restored to health after immersion in the water.

A watercolour painting of the Harimandir or ‘Temple of God’, situated in Amritsar in the Indian Panjab, executed by an anonymous artist in the Panjab style in the 1860’s. The Golden Temple, Amritsar, c. 1860, watercolor (The British Library)

Sikhs emphasise the fact that Harmandir Sahib has entrances on all four sides, reminding them that the gurdwara is open to every sort of person. This symbolises a Sikh commitment to equality regardless of gender, religion or ethnicity. According to tradition, at Guru Arjan Dev’s invitation, a pir (Muslim spiritual master) laid the gurdwara’s foundation stone, so affirming inter-religious friendship.

Sikhs worldwide look forward to visiting Harmandir Sahib and other gurdwaras connected with the Gurus, but pilgrimage is not a requirement of the Sikh religion. Indeed Guru Nanak was critical of tirath (pilgrimage), and the associated ritual bathing in sacred pools: his emphasis was on inward spirituality rather than external ritual.

A photograph of the façade and dome of the bāolī or stepwell adjacent to the main Gurdwara established by the third spiritual master of the Sikhs, Gurū Amar Dās, at Goindval in the Indian Panjab. Gurdwara of Amar Das, Goindval, 1931, photographic print (The British Library)

What are the features of gurdwaras?

The nishan sahib, an orange pennant usually bearing the Khalsa insignia of a double-edged sword, encircled by a quoit and cupped by two kirpans (swords), indicates that a building is a gurdwara. Just inside the entrance there are usually racks for devotees to keep their shoes, wash basins for them to wash their hands after touching their footwear, and head coverings for men who are not wearing a turban. There will be at least one divan hall, i.e. hall for congregational worship.

The focal point of this hall is the Guru Granth Sahib, which is ensconced on cushions on a canopied stand known as a palki (literally, palanquin). When it is not being read, the open volume is covered by rumalas (red and gold cloths). Generally men and women sit down separately on each side of the hall, after having first walked up towards the palki and touched the floor with their forehead in a reverential act known as matha tekna. They may also put some money in the golak (collection box) in front of the palki. If someone is sitting behind the Guru Granth Sahib, reading from it, the reader or another attendant waves a chauri from time to time above the volume as a sign of respect. (Originally the chauri was a fan and – in the centuries before electric fans and air conditioning – dignitaries would be kept cool by an attendant in this way.)

Many gurdwaras have a separate room, known as sachkhand (literally ‘the realm of truth’) in which the Guru Granth Sahib reposes at night on a bed. There is also often a foyer area in which pictures of Sikh shahids (martyrs) are displayed. In the divan hall the walls are generally bare except, in some cases, for portrayals of Guru Nanak and Guru Gobind Singh.

Sikhs may visit the gurdwara briefly to pay their respects to the Guru Granth Sahib and sit for a while in its presence. The sangat (congregation) gathers for kirtan (the singing of the Gurus’ words) and katha (exposition). In the UK the largest attendance is usually on a Sunday, as this is when most people are free, but no particular day of the week is prescribed by Sikh teaching. Festivals too are often celebrated on the following Sunday. Although an akhand path (unbroken reading) continues through the night, the majority of attenders gather for the bhog (the joyful climax) on the final morning. Congregational worship always concludes with an Ardas (petitionary prayer that refers extensively to Sikh history), which everyone reverently stands up for. Then, in cupped hands, everyone receives a portion of karah parshad, a sweet pudding made from equal amounts of coarsely ground wheat flour, clarified butter and sugar plus some water. It symbolises everyone’s equality.

The karah parshad is prepared in the Guru-ka-langar, the Guru’s langar i.e. the kitchen-cum-refectory that is as essential to gurdwaras as the divan hall is. Langar is the word for not only the area of the gurdwara where food is prepared, served and eaten, but also for the time-honoured institution itself of daily providing free vegetarian hospitality for all who come. Langar is not an add-on – it is as central to Sikh practice as the worship in the divan hall. The provision of langar exemplifies the key Sikh principle of seva (voluntary service) which is, in Sikh teaching, coupled inextricably with simaran (mindfulness of God’s name).

Sikhs carry out other types of seva in the gurdwara too: they may dust the footwear in the racks, for example. Seva includes teaching children Punjabi and providing music classes in which Sikhs learn how to play the tabla and harmonium, or other instruments, and to sing shabads. Gurdwaras meet other needs as well: for instance, in Indian gurdwaras they may house a medical clinic.

The term kar seva is used for more strenuous volunteering such as construction work at the gurdwara or (in Amritsar) periodically cleaning out the sacred pool of water.

Disability is increasingly being catered for in gurdwaras but the sometimes rigidly applied requirement for all to sit on the floor in the presence of the Guru Granth Sahib and in the langar hall has posed a challenge to those who cannot sit on the floor or who require a wheel chair. One solution has been lowering part of the floor in the divan hall, so as to accommodate wheelchairs at a level that is deemed respectful to the Guru Granth Sahib. Catering for disability is currently a live issue for the design of gurdwaras. Many langars in the UK provide some benches and tables, although this is contrary to Sikh tradition.

Gurdwara management

In 1925, while India was still under British rule, the Sikh Gurdwaras Act was passed. The Act brought historic gurdwaras under the control of an elected body, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (Chief Gurdwara Management Committee), usually referred to by its initials as the SGPC. Prior to 1925 many concerned Sikhs had been involved in peaceful mass protests against the corrupt gurdwara managers (mahants) who had enjoyed British support.

In the UK, gurdwaras are generally run by an elected management committee. Some sangats, however, venerate a religious leader (known as a sant or a baba) and in these gurdwaras all decisions are referred to the sant concerned.

 

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Written by Eleanor Nesbitt

Eleanor Nesbitt is Professor Emerita (Religions and Education) at the University of Warwick. Her ethnographic studies have focused on Christian, Hindu, Sikh and ‘mixed-faith’ families in the UK. She has published extensively on Hindu and Sikh communities. Her recent publications include: Sikhism A Very Short Introduction (2nd edn 2016, Oxford University Press) and (with Kailash Puri) Pool of Life: The Autobiography of a Punjabi Agony Aunt (2013, Sussex Academic Press). She is co-editor of Brill’s Encyclopedia of Sikhism and her forthcoming publication is Sikh: Two Centuries of Western Women’s Art and Writing (2020, Kashi Books).

The text in this article is available under the Creative Commons License.

Originally published by The British Library.

The Guru Granth Sahib plays an integral part in the lives of Sikhs. Eleanor Nesbitt describes the rituals that surround it and its role in the daily lives and life cycle rites of Sikhs, also exploring Sikh daily prayer, devotional songs and festivals.

Nam simaran

Guru Nanak emphasised that nam is central to life, together with snan (bathing) and dan (giving). Nam means ‘name’ in both Sanskrit and less ancient Indian languages: indeed, in many European languages too, the word for ‘name’ has hardly changed from its Indo-European origins (compare nomen, nom, nuome). In the Sikh religious context nam refers to the divine name – not just God’s name in the usual sense, however, but almost an encapsulation of God. For well over a hundred years, the Guru’s teaching has often been summarised as nam japo, kirat karo, vand chhako, meaning ‘repeat the name, do your work, and share what you earn’. The word japan (pronounced ‘jup – un’, meaning to repeat) and ‘simaran’ (pronounced ‘sim-run’, to remember) are used interchangeably for the practice of prolonged focus on God. This can involve repeating ‘Satnam Sri Vahiguru’, individually or with others, or it can be carried out by singing the shabads (compositions) in the Guru Granth Sahib or by listening attentively to them as the ragis sing them in the gurdwara congregation.

Rānī Jindān’s prayer book includes three hymns from the Guru Granth Sahib. Shown here are the opening folios of Guru Nanak’s Bāvan Akharī; the illustration depicts Guru Nanak as a young man, in dialogue with the Sidhs (Hindu ascetics). Prayer Book of Rani Jindan, 1828–30 (© The British Library)

What are kirtan, shabad and katha?

Kirtan is corporate singing of devotional songs. Ragis (pronounced with a ‘hard ‘g’) are musicians who sing shabads (compositions, hymns) from the Guru Granth Sahib and they provide musical accompaniment by playing tabla and harmonium or (increasingly) the more traditional stringed instruments that were used before European missionaries introduced harmoniums into Punjab in the 19th century. Often in the gurdwara – especially at festival time – a giani (a Sikh recognised for his learning) offers a katha, an exposition of the shabads, for the sangat (congregation).

What are the Sikh festivals?

The Sikh religious calendar consists of melas (literally ‘fairs’) and gurpurabs (anniversaries of Gurus). The Vaisakhi festival in April is the most important mela, a commemoration of the founding of the Khalsa in 1699 at the first khande di pahul on what was already a spring harvest day in the calendar of Punjabi celebrations. Notable gurpurabs are the birthdays of Guru Nanak (celebrated on the day of the November full moon) and Guru Gobind Singh; the shahidi (martyrdom) days of Guru Arjan and Guru Teg Bahadar and the anniversary of the day when the Guru Granth Sahib was installed in the Harmandir Sahib.

Until recent years Sikh festivals were observed according to the north Indian Bikrami calendar. As most anniversaries were determined by the phase of the moon, the date would vary each year by the secular western calendar. In the 21st century many Sikhs instead follow the Nanakshahi calendar in which most festivals’ dates have a fixed date according to the secular calendar.

48 hours before the morning of the festival, an akhand path begins. On major festivals there is an extended kirtan in the gurdwara and, in some cities, Vaisakhi or the birthday of Guru Gobind Singh may be celebrated with a nagar kirtan. This means that the Guru Granth Sahib, duly enthroned and attended, is driven slowly through the streets. Panj piare, dressed in orange, blue or white, provide the vanguard and hundreds or thousands of Sikhs follow in joyful procession, while refreshments are offered to the walkers by volunteers along the route.

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Written by Eleanor Nesbitt

Eleanor Nesbitt is Professor Emerita (Religions and Education) at the University of Warwick. Her ethnographic studies have focused on Christian, Hindu, Sikh and ‘mixed-faith’ families in the UK. She has published extensively on Hindu and Sikh communities. Her recent publications include: Sikhism A Very Short Introduction (2nd edn 2016, Oxford University Press) and (with Kailash Puri) Pool of Life: The Autobiography of a Punjabi Agony Aunt (2013, Sussex Academic Press). She is co-editor of Brill’s Encyclopedia of Sikhism and her forthcoming publication is Sikh: Two Centuries of Western Women’s Art and Writing (2020, Kashi Books).

The text in this article is available under the Creative Commons License.

Originally published by The British Library.

There are currently about 24 million Sikhs worldwide. The majority live in the Indian state of Punjab. They regard Guru Nanak (1469–1539) as the founder of their faith and Guru Gobind Singh (1666–1708), the tenth Guru, as the Guru who formalised their religion. Religions and religious teachers do not exist in a vacuum: India, in the Gurus’ time, was ruled by Mughal emperors who were Muslim. Punjabi society was a mix of Muslims and Hindus.

The Sikh religion has evolved from the Gurus’ teachings, and from their followers’ devotion, into a world religion with its own scripture, code of discipline, gurdwaras (places of worship), festivals and life cycle rites and Sikhs share in a strong sense of identity and celebrate their distinctive history.

A central principle of the Gurus’ teaching is the importance of integrating spirituality with carrying out one’s responsibilities. Sikhs should perform seva (voluntary service of others) while at the same time practising simaran (remembrance of God). The ideal is to be a sant sipahi (warrior saint) i.e. a person who combines spiritual qualities with a readiness for courageous action. Guru Nanak, the first Guru, and Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Guru, continue to feature prominently in Sikhs’ experience of their religion.

Who was Guru Nanak?

Guru Nanak was born in 1469 in Talvandi, a place now renamed Nankana Sahib, in the state of Punjab in present-day Pakistan. His parents were Hindus and they were Khatri by caste, which meant that they had a family tradition of account-keeping. The name ‘Nanak’, like Nanaki, his sister’s name, may indicate that they were born in their mother’s parents’ home, known in Punjabi as their nanake. Guru Nanak’s wife was called Sulakhani and she bore two sons. Until a life-changing religious experience, Nanak was employed as a store keeper for the local Muslim governor.

One day, when he was about thirty, he experienced being swept into God’s presence, while he was having his daily bath in the river. The result was that he gave away his possessions and began his life’s work of communicating his spiritual insights. This he did by composing poetic compositions which he sang to the accompaniment of a rabab, the stringed instrument that his Muslim travelling companion, Mardana, played. After travelling extensively Guru Nanak settled down, gathering a community of disciples (Sikhs) around him, in a place known as Kartarpur (‘Creator Town’).

A portrait of Guru Nanak (1469–1539), the first Sikh Guru, Durgashankar Pathak, Sarvasiddhāntattvacūḍāmaṇi (Crest-jewel of the Essence of all Systems of Astronomy), 19th century, traditional gouache and gold on paper (The British Library)

Guru Nanak’s poems (or shabads) in the Guru Granth Sahib (scripture) give a clear sense of his awareness of there being one supreme reality (ik oankar) behind the world’s many phenomena. His shabads emphasise the need for integrity rather than outward displays of being religious, plus the importance of being mindful of God’s name (nam) and being generous to others through dan (pronounced like the English word ‘darn’) i.e. giving to others. His poems are rich in word-pictures of animals and birds and human activities such as farming and commerce.

The British Library holds a number of lithographs and manuscripts of much-loved stories of Guru Nanak’s life; these include the Vilaitvali Janam-sakhi and the more famous, beautifully illustrated B40 Janam-sakhi. (The word ‘janam’ means birth and ‘sakhi’ means testimony or evidence.) Some of the events recounted in the Janam-sakhis are miracles, despite the fact that Guru Nanak and his successors criticised miracle-working. The stories are written in such a way as to glorify the Guru; the anecdotes often convey a deeper message: for instance when Nanak asked a rich man to take a needle to heaven for him, so showing the futility of accumulating wealth.

Guru Nanak is seated under a tree with his travelling companion Mardana; standing before them is a rich money-lender whom the Guru had entrusted with a needle, requesting that it be returned to him in heaven. Having understood the futility of amassing wealth, the money-lender is shown with hands joined in supplication as he begs for the Guru’s forgiveness. Janam-sākhī, 1733 C.E. (The British Library)

Guru Nanak’s importance results not just from his inspirational teaching but also from the practical basis he provided for a new religious movement: he established a community of his followers in Kartarpur and he appointed a successor, Guru Angad, on the basis of his devoted service. Guru Nanak is respected as ‘Baba Nanak’ by Punjabi Muslims as well as by Sikhs and Punjabi Hindus.

Each year Sikhs celebrate his birthday on the day of the full moon in November. Like other gurpurabs (festivals commemorating a Guru) it is marked by an akhand path (pronounced like ‘part’), a 48-hour, continuous, complete reading of the Guru Granth Sahib which ends on the festival morning. Commemorative events in 2019 celebrated the 550th anniversary of Guru Nanak’s birth.

What is the concept of Guru in Sikhism?

At first Nanak was called ‘Baba Nanak’, with ‘Baba’ being an affectionate term, like ‘grandfather’, for an older man. These days he is better known as Guru Nanak. Just as the word ‘Sikh’ means learner, so ‘Guru’ means teacher. Sikhs explain ‘Guru’ as meaning ‘remover of darkness’. The Gurmukhi script that is used for the Punjabi language has no capital letters, but in English the correct practice is to use a capital ‘G’ for Guru in the Sikh sense. There have been just ten human Gurus. Their lives spanned the period from Nanak’s birth in 1469 to the passing away of Guru Gobind Singh in 1708. Since then the Sikhs’ living Guru has been the Guru Granth Sahib, the sacred volume of scripture. The Guru Granth Sahib is much more than a book: it is believed to embody the Guru as well as containing compositions by six of the ten Gurus. The preeminent Guru (Nanak’s Guru) is God, whose many names include ‘Satguru’ (the true Guru) and ‘Waheguru’ (a name which began as an exclamation of praise).

Sikhs believe that all ten human Gurus embodied the same spirit of Guruship and that their different styles were appropriate to the differing circumstances in which they lived. Guru Nanak’s first four successors, Guru Angad Dev, Guru Amar Das, Guru Ram Das and Guru Arjan Dev, were also poets. Their compositions, together with Guru Nanak’s, became the basis of the Guru Granth Sahib. While their spiritual emphasis seamlessly continued Guru Nanak’s, each made a distinctive contribution to Sikh community life. Guru Angad formalised the Gurmukhi script in which the scripture is written. It was almost certainly developed from the shorthand that accountants used for keeping their accounts, as a simpler version of the script that is still used for the older language of Sanskrit.

Guru Amar Das made the langar a key feature of Sikh life: a shared vegetarian meal eaten by people of all ranks sitting together regardless of their social status. His other innovations included setting up a Sikh place of pilgrimage and appointing preachers to lead local Sikh congregations. His son-in-law and successor, Guru Ram Das appointed stewards-cum-missionaries to organise worship and collect offerings and he started the settlement which in due course was renamed Amritsar. Its name, meaning the pool of immortality, referred to the pool associated with the temple, Harmandir Sahib, that was completed in the time of the fifth Guru, Guru Arjan Dev. In 1604 Guru Arjan Dev installed in Harmandir Sahib the volume of scripture, his compilation of the poems of the first five Gurus plus works by other spiritual poets such as Kabir.

Guru Arjan Dev is also remembered as the first Sikh martyr. Following his death, the sixth Guru, his son Har Gobind, became a military leader. Similarly, the tenth Guru, Guru Gobind Rai, whose father Guru Tegh Bahadar is also remembered as a martyr, assumed a high military profile. The seventh, eighth and ninth Gurus, Guru Har Rai, Guru Har Krishan and Guru Tegh Bahadar, were not military leaders – in fact Guru Har Krishan passed away as a child. Guru Tegh Bahadar championed the brahmins of Kashmir who had appealed to him for help. He was put to death when he refused to become a Muslim.

According to tradition, Guru Gobind Rai became Guru Gobind Singh in 1699, when he called his followers together and initiated five men who volunteered their lives for him. These five (known as panj piare or five beloved ones), and all Sikhs who have been initiated in a similar way in the years since, make up the Khalsa, the community that owes its allegiance to the Guru. Guru Gobind Singh received the amrit (holy water of initiation) from the panj piare and, like them, took the name ‘Singh’ (lion) in place of his earlier name.

A portrait of Guru Gobind Singh (1666–1708), the last in a lineage of ten human Gurus under which Sikhism flourished. Durgashankar Pathak, Sarvasiddhāntattvacūḍāmaṇi (Crest-jewel of the Essence of all Systems of Astronomy), 19th century (The British Library)

Khalsa initiates (known as amritdhari Sikhs) accept a daily discipline which includes having five identifying marks (the ‘five Ks): kes (hair i.e. not allowing hair or beard to be shortened or removed), kirpan (sword), kachha (shorts – usually nowadays worn under one’s outer clothing), kangha (comb) and kara (iron or steel bangle). Female initiates take the name ‘Kaur’ (literally ‘prince’). In practice, many Sikh parents give their children the names ‘Singh’ and ‘Kaur’, so these names do not mean that someone has been initiated.

Guru Gobind Singh incorporated his father, Tegh Bahadar’s, hymns in the Sikh scripture. Shortly before his death, he instructed Sikhs to regard the Granth (volume) as their Guru – hence its respectful title, Guru Granth Sahib. Guru Gobind Singh himself was a poet and his compositions are in another volume, the Dasam Granth.

Written by Eleanor Nesbitt

Eleanor Nesbitt is Professor Emerita (Religions and Education) at the University of Warwick. Her ethnographic studies have focused on Christian, Hindu, Sikh and ‘mixed-faith’ families in the UK. She has published extensively on Hindu and Sikh communities. Her recent publications include: Sikhism A Very Short Introduction (2nd edn 2016, Oxford University Press) and (with Kailash Puri) Pool of Life: The Autobiography of a Punjabi Agony Aunt (2013, Sussex Academic Press). She is co-editor of Brill’s Encyclopedia of Sikhism and her forthcoming publication is Sikh: Two Centuries of Western Women’s Art and Writing (2020, Kashi Books).

Originally published by The British Library.